My Hero School Adventure is All Wrong, As Expected
by storybookknight
Summary: Hikigaya Hachiman is the last person on earth who should ever apply to U.A. High School. Yet somehow, he manages anyway. In a world of irrepressible optimism and idealism, these are the adventures of a young man who believes that idealism is a lie.
1. My Hero School Adventure Is Wrong

Society calls someone who suffers so that another person can benefit a victim.

Society calls someone who suffers so that society can benefit a hero.

When a mugger assaults a helpless victim, injures them, and steals a week's worth of wages, society calls that a terrible crime that should never happen to anyone.

When a hero puts in a week's worth of heroing on society's behalf, not only do they lose out on the potential wages that they could have made by working for their own benefit, they also bear a great risk of injury or even death, yet for some reason, society calls this a privilege and an honor that should go only to the most deserving.

Simply put, society is stealing from heroes. The great masses of ordinary people who expect to be defended and saved from disaster every day are no more than parasites on the backs of the powerful, escaping being blamed for the hero's losses through the virtues of collective responsibility. Since each person is no weaker or needier than the people around them, it naturally must not be their fault that they had to be helped, therefore they must have deserved to be helped, therefore stealing from those that helped you is perfectly just.

Of course, society claims that heroes are paid for their help, but are they really? If I take 500 yen from someone, and 'pay' them 100 yen for the privilege, is that really payment? Most Pro Heroes make the comfortable wages of civil servants, yet so do most civil servants or salarymen. Society demands that salarymen work in air-conditioned office buildings, and demands that heroes rush into buildings that are on fire, yet has somehow decided that both are deserving of equivalent financial rewards. As for those wealthy heroes that do exist, they tend to be the heads of agencies, the exceptionally attractive, the ones with business-related Quirks, and so on; if they had become CEOs / actresses / businessmen instead of heroes, who's to say that they wouldn't have made more?

Of course, there are some people whose Quirk has no business applications, and who would not have been successful in non-heroic employment who could be said to have made money off of being a hero - but even they are making less than they could. Society has decreed that anyone in possession of an incredibly deadly and dangerous Quirk who uses it to its fullest potential is a Villain, and must therefore be apprehended by those people with violent and dangerous Quirks who have bowed to the whims of society.

Naturally, as a member of the current society who appreciates living in an enlightened democracy rather than the All Might or Endeavor Shogunate, I have no complaints with this particular instance of 'theft'. Nevertheless, if you were to ask whether All Might would make more money as a volunteer hero or as a ruthless warlord, the balance obviously leans towards the latter.

So then, why do heroes, those members of society with the most useful and powerful perks, allow society to steal from them? Why don't they insist on fairer wages? Why are there so many heroes who accept very low-paying hero positions even though they could get a more profitable job? Or who donate the majority of their heroic earnings to charity? If they're already being stolen from by society, why do so many heroes go out of their way to give society even more?

Many people would say that it is out of the innate goodness and kindness of their hearts, but that is ridiculous propaganda intended to placate the masses. Humans are rational animals, and don't take actions without reasons for doing so. Saying that someone is 'good' or 'kind' is just another way of saying that someone is more motivated than usual by intangible benefits.

Fame, approval, respect, praise awe, worship, satisfaction, meaningfulness of life, heroes receive all of these things from society. The heroes that are most esteemed and respected are those that are motivated to do the most for society's benefit, and those who do not receive enough accolades to make up for the strenuous demands that a hero career places upon them burn out and fade away.

Since heroes give their time and energy away and receive accolades in return, you might be tempted to say that rather than theft, heroism might better be classified as a trade. Consider, though, that society has a monopoly on fame, near-monopolies on praise, worship, respect and approval, and is by far the cheapest supplier for satisfaction and meaning in life. Furthermore, it is obvious that the majority of people in life are unhappy and unfulfilled, that more people apply to become heroes than ever succeed, and that those who do become heroes are often targets of jealousy and envy. Although praise and respect are intangible and cost nothing to create, clearly there is not enough to go around. As society is the only supplier of this good, it is clear that society is creating artificial scarcity in order to raise the price that it can demand that heroes pay to receive it. Consider the fact that vigilantism is illegal. On the one side, some people are so desperate for praise and respect that they have no other recourse than breaking the law in order to acquire it; on the other side its illegality restricts the supply of praise and respect further. In short, when society shakes down a hero for their services in exchange for public praise and approval, it is not a trade but rather an extortion, which is a form of theft. QED.

If heroism is theft, then the best heroes are those individuals that make the best victims for society's predation. Society clearly agrees with me, as children with obviously powerful or useful Quirks are given access to praise and respect at an early age, causing as many as possible children who are 'hero material' to become addicted to society's approval and therefore to seek ever greater and higher levels of fame and respect. Those with more ordinary Quirks, on the other hand, are doled out praise and respect in minimal doses so that the neediest and greediest among the mundanes will work hard enough to match with skill the natural usefulness to society of the powerful.

If society wanted to create an ideal hero, they would take someone who had never received any praise or respect in their life, who had never thought they would amount to anything, and then suddenly grant them incredible amounts of both fame and power simultaneously. Unlike children who began powerful, they would know what it felt like to have nothing, would have no acquired immunity to the addicting effects of society's approval, and would furthermore feel indebted to the society that awarded them the chance for success.

However, it is impossible to grant super-powerful Quirks to Quirkless nobodies, so that is wishful thinking. The next best thing, therefore, would likely be an individual whose Quirk everyone thought was useless, but who suddenly discovered a way to become powerful with it. Someone like that would be desperate to escape from the feeling of worthlessness, unlikely to return to a meaningless life once they had the chance to excel, and would be just as dedicated as someone who had had the hope of success from the beginning.

I, Hikigaya Hachiman, have no particular record of prior service to the community. Neither have I exhibited any signs of leadership or teamwork in the past. In point of fact, I have spent the majority of my elementary and junior high school careers despised by the community, with a Quirk so useless that people used to call me Zero-man instead of Hachiman. Nevertheless, I believe that I would make a good candidate to attend the Heroics Program at U.A. High School, precisely because I am exactly the type of friendless nobody who is likely to fall for society's blandishments and become addicted to a life of underpaid prestige. Despite the fact that I have no illusions about the devil's bargain that society offers, it is one that I am still willing to accept.

Because ultimately, I can guarantee that my greed for meaningfulness in life is superior to anyone else's.

Sincerely,

Hikigaya Hachiman.

Of course, even as I signed the essay in front of me, I knew that I was lying. For one thing, even if I had a vague interest in a meaningful life, I was absolutely the last person who would ever be motivated by what _society_ thought of me. I was a Loner with a capital L, the sort of person who had existed separate from such concepts as friendship and camaraderie for long enough that they were no longer necessary, a fish that had survived on land for long enough that it had figured out how to breathe air. As a side note, when I do interact with people, they have a distressing tendency to tell me that I have the eyes of a dead fish, but I'm pretty sure that that's unrelated. And although I did have a Quirk that had formerly been judged as useless, a designation that could lead to social ostracism for even the friendliest person in the world, if I was honest with myself I realized that my lack of friends had more to do with my personality than my Quirk. Charitably, my personality could be described as 'cynical' and 'overly honest'; more typically, it was usually described as 'rotten'. Where the average person who applied for UA's Heroics course was an idealistic youth dedicated to achieving their dreams, I was the sort of person who denounced ideals, youth, dedication, and dreams as lies, both separately and collectively.

No, rather than taking a grueling test with a 1-in-300 rate of passing out of a love for heroism and public service, I was trying to get into U.A.'s Heroics program for reasons that might be more accurately described as a combination of 'enlightened self-interest', 'stubborn refusal to admit one's own error', and 'spite'.

 _Especially_ spite.

If that sounds strange, well, maybe I should start at the beginning.

My story, like most peoples' stories these days, starts with my Quirk. Personally, I've always believed that was a lazy form of storytelling; reducing a character's personality down to their Quirk is the hallmark of a middle-school-syndrome hack who can't be bothered to describe their protagonists in any way more complicated than a set of superpowers attached to a generically shonen archetype. Certainly, my Quirk isn't directly responsible for my generalized feelings of misanthropy towards society, nor is it responsible for my decision to apply to U.A. despite those feelings, but somehow my Quirk lurks around the edges of those thoughts regardless.

Picture if you will a typical elementary-school classroom. Odds are you're imagining rows of desks and chairs with a blackboard at the front of the room; shelves to the sides and posters on the walls. At the front of it, in front of the blackboard, imagine an idealistic young boy with messy dark hair and lively eyes, a Hikigaya Hachiman not yet resigned to the realities of social ostracism. Sure, he's never been the most popular kid, but today is Quirk show-and-tell day, and he's sure that when he shows everyone else how awesome his Quirk is he'll be sure to finally make some friends!

"Uhm, hi everybody! My name is Hikigaya Hachiman, and, um, I have a power copy Quirk!"

"Oooh!" "Ohhh!" "Eeeh?!"

"Um, it's called '108 Skills!' It lets me copy up to 108 other peoples' Quirks by touching them!"

"Whaaaat?" "Wow!" "No way!"

"Um, every Quirk is 108 times weaker, though, and I can only use one at a time, so it's not like a super duper Quirk or anything, but it lets me do a lot of different things so I like it!"

"Show us a Quirk you copied! Can you copy Rekka-kun's flame Quirk?"

"Uhm, I'll try…"

Cue a long session of sweating, concentration, and finally the barest flicker of flame hovering over the palm of the black-haired youth.

"Ehhhh… Oh! I get it! You have 108 Quirks, but they're all completely useless! Right?"

"Uhm, that is…"

"It's like we learned in math class! 108 times 0 still equals 0!"

And thus, the friendless students hopes were dashed. In addition to being called Creepy-gaya and Hikki-germ, his fellow elementary students now also called him Zero-gaya, and had an excuse not to let him touch them so that he wouldn't copy their Quirks. And of course by him, I mean me. Still, I wasn't the first child in the world to be handed a useless Quirk, and I won't be the last. If I had been popular or likeable to begin with, my classmates probably would have been kind enough not to point out my deficiencies, and would have just treated me normally. At the time, though, I had the impulse to somehow prove that my Quirk could be useful, that it could be so useful that I could be a super-awesome hero with it, and so on.

In other words, I developed chuunibyou delusions at a precocious age. Not to brag, but I was developing unrealistic expectations of my future at a middle-school level when I was only in elementary school. You could even say that I had the impractical fantasies of a child twice my age. So if you were to say that I had dreamed of being a hero since a young age, you would technically be correct. If, you know, you omitted the fact that I no longer desired any such thing.

Heroism is a lie. As lies go, it's very successful; virtually everyone would prefer to believe that their heroes are kind and just, that they are motivated to defend them due to some sort of intrinsic goodness, that the special qualities of their character lead them to devote themselves to a life of service. If everyone correctly believed that their lives were in the hands of a crowd of glory-seeking, fame-addicted celebrities who happened to have won the genetic lottery, they probably would sleep a lot less soundly at night. Luckily, one of my 108 skills is the ability to sleep soundly anytime, anywhere! It's less exciting than the Quirk of the person I copied from, who could make do with only 15 minutes of sleep a day, but even though it isn't flashy it's one of the last Quirks I'd 'forget' in order to learn something else. As to what led me to this realization, well….

Picture a kind, beautiful girl. The sort of person who spares a moment to chat with anyone who interacts with her, even social outcasts. The sort of girl who would give a creepy loser her cell phone number out of pity, just so that he wouldn't be left out while everyone else was exchanging contact information. The sort of girl who declares her desire to be a hero, and who is supported in turn by everyone around her. The sort of girl that even a cynical outcast could admire, and maybe even fall for. The sort of girl that would inspire a lazy slacker to apply to U.A.'s hero program in the hopes of impressing her.

Before you immediately assume that I hate heroes because I was rejected by a girl like that, let me tell you. Yes, I was rejected - but that's not the point! By my third year of junior high, I was no stranger to being rejected, and had in fact been shot down by multiple girls in the past, not that that's a particularly important fact. Nothing about any of them drove me to any realizations in particular. It was the fact that after being rejected by the so-called most heroic girl in the school, I was subsequently used as a target of ridicule, mocked behind my back and occasionally to my face in order to reinforce her place in the pecking order, to insulate her from any losses of social capital that might have occurred from her giving the school loser the idea that he might have a chance with her. I had admired her for being kind to everyone, for being generous and helpful, for being someone that even a cynical person like me could admire as a good person. And then she decided to drag me through the dirt, tell all of her friends how creepy I was for hitting on her, and laugh at me for thinking that I could apply to the same hero school that she did.

And so I thought, if the most 'heroic' girl in school could do something like that so easily, what does that say about professional heroes? The 'best' heroes like All Might, of course, have their images so carefully managed that no hints of impropriety can slip out, but if you look at less-famous heroes like Captain Celebrity or Mount Lady or Native, the insincerity is plain to be seen. In the end, I discovered that Heroes are just as petty, flawed, and human as anyone else, which I suppose shouldn't really have been a surprise.

It's easy to be kind or heroic when doing so costs you nothing. Heroes and nice girls have powerful Quirks or pretty faces that allow them to make other peoples' days brighter with just a casual effort, and are more than willing to do so in order to maintain the places in the social order that they have become accustomed to. It's easy to forget when talking to one that someone who is kind to you is also kind to everyone else. That the hero who rescued you from a fire today will have no memory of you next week, and that the girl who returned your text is doing so only out of social obligation. In the end, the only reason that anyone does anything is because of benefits. Any perceived kindnesses that your receive unprompted, any time that a hero saves you seemingly out of the goodness of your heart, those actions are only performed because they are expected of people who wish to be viewed as altruistic. The truth might be cruel, but if lying is an act of kindness then it follows that kindness is a lie.

Unfortunately, that realization came only after the season for applications to high school had passed. Due to my infatuation with a supposedly 'heroic' girl, I had applied to the top heroics program in the country in order to try to impress her. In theory, after being rejected by her I should have withdrawn my application. True, UA was an incredibly selective school that virtually none of my classmates would be able to enter; if I successfully managed to be admitted there I would never have to see anyone from junior high and could have a fresh start However, the same could be said of Sobu Academy, a school that judged entirely on academics without any consideration of someone's Quirk. UA, and particularly UA's heroics program, was the sort of school that I should have realized was beyond my reach. And if I hadn't been approached on the streets one day by a trio of petty bullies who thought I had a punchable face, it would have been.

I was just walking down the street, doing some shopping before I headed home, when all of a sudden I heard someone swearing loudly. I turned around just in time to see a trio of middle school students from the other middle school in town, and a flying soda bottle full of green gunk that I ducked just in time to avoid having it hit me in the face. "Hey! Watch it!" I shouted.

The three kids from the other school turned towards me. The leader of the trio, a blonde boy with a permanently surly expression and wild hair, rolled his eyes at me. "Get lost. I'm in a shitty mood." With that, he hoisted up a soda can in one hand. With a miniscule flex of his fingers, the can erupted in flames, an explosion charring it to near-unrecognizability.

As a courageous, hot-blooded youth firmly opposed to bullying, I immediately responded with "Oh yeah of course never mind me I'll just be on my way now sorry to bother you hahaha see you later!" I also lowered my torso towards him a few times, signalling my readiness to charge him and in no way appearing like a submissive bow - look, when you've been beaten up as many times as I have, some things are just instinctual, okay?

Sure enough, my display of cowardice worked. When one of the blonde's sidekicks suggested "Hey, why don't we head down to the arcade and find a few easy marks? Heck, we could even pick up a few on our way," the blonde responded with something like "Idiot, I can't get caught with stuff like that on my permanent record if I want to go pro. Let's just go."

Briefly, I congratulated myself on successfully portraying myself as beneath their notice. By defusing their irritation and accepting my place subordinate to them, I had made it not worth the risk to flout social norms and expectations in order to deal with me! I was all prepared to be on my way, when I suddenly saw a look of shock on the faces of the people threatening me, and felt a cold slimy sensation encircling my ankle. Suddenly, I heard a watery voice coming from behind me. "Whoa, what great human shields!" it said. I felt the hairs on my arms stand up straight, and my palms began to sweat. "And what interesting quirks they have!" And that's when I was yanked up by my ankle, smothered in goo, and used as a human shield by a supervillain.

A lot of things go through your mind while you're trying not to choke to death. As I fought greedily for air, straining myself against the ropy tendrils enveloping me, taking deep gasps of smoke and soot from the nearby burning buildings every time I was able to free my nose and mouth, I thought things like "Why haven't the heroes done anything yet? Why did that blonde asshole have to kick that soda bottle? Even if the heroes' quirks aren't helpful, why did they stop trying? If I die here, please, someone erase my hard drive before my parents see it!" But more and more as time went on, those thoughts all started to coalesce into just one thought: "No." No, I was not going to die in a shitty shopping center, smothered to death by some two-bit goo villain. No, I was not going to leave my sister alone in that empty house. No, even the villain said I had an interesting quirk, there had to be something I could do to get myself free of him, at least one of my '108 Skills' that would get me out!

And so I tried everything. Fire, Water, Lightning, Psychic, Fighting; I used every Emitter perk I had copied over the years. When those ran out, I switched to the Transformation perks; usually I hated using those because my body wasn't designed to stretch or shrink or grow like the bodies that I copied them from and they always left me feeling sore, but in my moment of desperation I didn't really care. Of course those were useless too - no amount of stretching my arms a few extra inches or squeezing myself to be a few inches skinnier could get me out of the predicament I was in. In desperation, I even tried copying the ooze guy's power, thinking that even if heteromorphic quirks were typically useless to me (stubbornly, my body insisted on remaining 100% human-shaped no matter what I did), then at least my Quirk would tell me what his did and maybe what his weaknesses were. But no, all that achieved was that I used my fractional power copying quirk to copy a fraction of another power copying quirk… and also I was now 1/108th ooze, a state of affairs that most people would say was only surprising in that the fraction wasn't higher.

Just as my vision was starting to go grey around the edges, I saw possible salvation approaching. A scrawny-looking green-haired kid, rushing into danger despite the fact that the local heroes had already half given up, risking it all to come save me. A real hero, not like the so-called 'pros' that had given up on us. My heart leapt in hope that he had some kind of powerful quirk that he knew would be helpful, that he would be able to save the day! Naturally, of course, my hero threw his book bag at the ooze villain and started shouting "Kacchan! Kacchan I'll get you out of there! Kacchan! Kacchan!"

Oi, even if it's only natural to want to save your friends first, I'm here too you know? Why isn't there someone to shout 'Hacchan, Hacchan?' Am I really that unpopular? Oh, wait, I know the answer to that one. Yeah, nobody's coming for me.

As I thought those words, I gave up. I stopped struggling.

I was completely, totally defeated.

If All Might hadn't shown up in literally the very next second and blown the Ooze Villain away with a Smash, I really would have resigned myself to death, thinking that I was so unimportant to anyone that it really wouldn't have mattered to anyone that I died. I still have nightmares about that moment sometimes, nightmares about an empty, meaningless death.

All Might saved me from that. And to repay that singular act of grace, I, without permission or any right to do so, reached out with my Quirk, copied his power, and learned his deepest secrets.

And I will probably never forgive myself for it.

But because of that one irredeemable sin, my quirk suddenly gained a level of power and flexibility I could only have dreamed of in the past. Suddenly, my 108 skills were things that could actually be _useful_. So I guess if you were going to point to a single reason that I was at U.A., taking the admission test to the toughest, most elite heroics course in the nation…

Naturally, it was to steal useful quirks from all of the other students taking the test who thought they were strong enough to make it in.


	2. But First, The Reason Why

**A/N: Thank you everyone for your kind reviews! I do intend to update this frequently through at least the month of November (FanNoWriMo, y'all). Feel free to check this story out on SufficientVelocity or Spacebattles if you want to join in on the discussions there!**

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Being a victim was exhausting.

For days after the incident at the Tatooin shopping plaza, classmates who I passed in the hallway were forced by social obligation and custom to pretend to care about my health. "Dude, I heard what happened, glad to see you're okay." You aren't, but that's alright. I acknowledge your participation in this social ritual, and hereby discharge you from your responsibilities. "Hey man, I saw what happened to you on the news, are you all right?" Hmm, what answer will end this conversation fastest? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. "Are you sure you're okay? Do you need anything?" Not really, but I'll take any excuse to skip out of gym class. "Did you really get saved by All Might? What was he like?" A blur receding rapidly into the distance, because all of us victims that he saved were apparently beneath his notice, but I can't exactly say it like that so I'll just say he seemed busy.

As bad as school was, home was worse. Rather than relaxing comfortably at home, I spent far too much time having to hang out with my adorable little sister in order to reassure her that I wasn't suddenly not going to come home one day. Even my parents came home from work in time for dinner several days in a row immediately after, then took turns being home in the evenings for a while to 'make sure that we were alright.' To be sure, I loved my family. And I didn't hate having my parents around, especially early enough in the evenings that they were awake enough to hold a conversation. Even Komachi's pestering was endearing in its own right, though having to console her every time she had a nightmare and woke up crying was something I very much could have done without. But between school and home, for several weeks after the incident I had zero time to myself, to sit, think, or relax. For a person as used to peaceful solitude as myself, it was hellish.

Naturally, I resolved that I would never become a victim again.

One week after the Tatooin incident, things had quieted down enough at school and at home for me to finally be able to test out the powers I had copied. All Might was the most notable one, of course, but in the aftermath I had also managed to 'express my thanks' to some of the other pro heroes who had been at the scene. I had half a dozen pro-level quirks burning a hole in my pocket, and I hadn't had the chance to test any of them yet! "Oi, Komachi. I'm going out for a run," I called out, lacing up the shoes of my sneakers as I did so.

"Whoa, my big brother is suddenly getting fit? What will I do if a girl at school notices and takes you away from me? Ah! I earned a lot of Komachi points with that one!" My sister, unlike me, is a person who possesses the four necessary prerequisites to become popular - she's cute, pretty, has a good face, and has a good quirk. Despite that, she is still somehow willing to continue associating with her uncool older brother, which I can only attribute to her still being young and innocent. It occasionally gets a little obnoxious when she pops up like she did then, her eyes sparkling, making a big deal out of a simple run, but somehow I managed not to mind too much.

"Yeah, yeah," I responded. "Don't worry, I wouldn't forget about you even if I had a girl on each arm."

"Sis-con!" She said with an accusing finger pointed directly at me. Oi, don't you know that's rude? " Also, eww! A girl on each arm? You need to stop reading so many skeevy light novels, onii-chan!"

"Says the girl who spends all day watching television," I retorted, rolling my eyes at the familiar argument. "Anyways, I'll probably be out for a bit, but I should be back by dinner."

"Eh? For that long?" she said, surprised.

I replied with a shrug, not really wanting to explain. "Yeah. Why, something wrong?"

"Nuh-uh." Komachi shook her head, kind of a soft smile on her face. "It's fine, I was just surprised. Good luck, onii-chan!" And then, softly, almost under her breath - "Just as long as you run away properly, next time."

… Like I said, Komachi has a tendency to make a big deal out of some things too often, but she's just too cute for me to stay annoyed with her.

In any case, although I had said that I was going for a run, naturally, I was going out to test my new quirks. In theory, unlicensed quirk use in public areas was technically illegal; in practice, as long as you were careful not to damage anything, make too much noise, or otherwise gave other people cause to complain, nobody really cared. It was one of those sorts of laws that was mainly used as a reminder to keep things on the down-low if you lived in a nicer area, and was used give the police an excuse to mess with you if you lived in a low-income or minority community. Personally speaking, my 108 skills were typically all weak enough that you could barely even tell if I was using them, so I had never bothered with trying to find a special training area or anything like that in the past.

Unfortunately, that meant that the first time I tried out the quirk that I was calling Stockpile, rather than being in a secluded location where no-one could hear me yell, I was in a public park at the basketball court.

A quick digression: because my quirk lets me identify the specifics of the quirks that other people when I copy them, I am unusually well-informed about things that have to do with being a Quirk Counselor. In fact, my junior high Quirk Counselor had frequently suggested that I look into it as a career, since according to him 'my quirk itself wasn't really good for much else.' Specifically, something he said once stood out to me. "You don't really have to worry about this, Hachiman, since your quirk is so weak - that is, since it copies quirks so weakly - but if you're ever advising someone with a more powerful quirk in the future, you should know that a lot of copy quirks often just copy the main effect of the quirk, and don't copy the physical conditioning or the minor heteromorphic mutations that the quirk causes in order to use that quirk safely. Some people with copy quirks have really hurt themselves trying to copy unsuitable quirks, so in a way, you should probably be grateful that your own quirk is so… gentle."

On the plus side, not only did I jump high enough to dunk a basketball, I jumped high enough that I could have stepped on the hoop.

On the minus side, I nearly broke both of my legs just jumping, and hurt them even more when I landed.

Back on the plus side, I have a frie… hm. I have an acquai… hm. I have a gym partner named Zaimokuza Yoshiteru, whose strength at recovering from critique of his shitty light novel parodies is matched only by the fortitude that his Regeneration Quirk gives him at recovering from actual injuries. Despite the fact that a single jump had thoroughly strained every muscle in my legs and sprained both of my ankles as I landed, if I used 1/108th of his Regeneration Quirk to heal myself up I should be able to walk home in time for dinner.

Back on the minus side, Zaimokuza's Regeneration Quirk didn't exactly have a pain suppression ability associated with it, so healing up my busted legs was _just_ as painful as injuring them in the first place had been. Suffice it to say, I wasn't exactly quiet about the whole process.

After a few endless minutes of groaning, moaning, and whining as all the muscles in my legs reknit themselves, I was eventually able to hobble over to a nearby park bench and to sit on it instead of lying on the ground in a heap. It was a good thing that I did, too, because not long after I sat, a police officer on a bicycle came pedaling up to me. "Everything all right?" he called out.

"Uh.. Yeah, everything's fine." Despite the fact that I was still really quite sore, I did my best to maintain a poker face.

"I see." He said, shining his flashlight over me. Luckily, although I had landed pretty hard, Zaimokuza's Regeneration Quirk was keeping me from bruising too much. "We received reports of screaming noises nearby, possibly a woman or a small child according to the caller. Have you heard anything like that?"

Like a woman or a small child!? No, keep your poker face, think of a lie, think of a lie… "Uh, actually, yeah. There was this blonde kid & two of his friends who were all chasing someone in that direction," I said, waving towards the arcade. Petty? Maybe, but I figured that if they were known troublemakers in the area that it'd be a more believable excuse.

Also, it was possible that I was still holding a grudge.

Still, the police officer either believed me, or figured that I had been suitably admonished to stop making noise, and so headed off in search of those fictional hooligans. Similarly, once I had healed up a little bit more, I decided to hobble away to somewhere more private where I could lick my wounds and berate myself for being so stupid. All Might was the invincible hero, a man who could defeat practically every villain, or rescue people from even the most dangerous situations. Unsurprisingly, slightly less than 1% of near-infinity was still really, really, really big. Just because I had copied his power didn't mean I could actually use it; even tapping into that well of power for a brief second had strained nearly every (admittedly underdeveloped) muscle in my body and placed incredible pressure on my tendons and joints.

That's why, if I was going to be honest, the most useful power I had copied that day wasn't All Might's. Nor was it any of the quirks of Death Arms, Backdraft, Mt. Lady, or Kamui Woods, all of whose hands I had shook 'in order to thank them for trying to rescue me', nor the quirk of that blonde kid I got trapped with. No, the most useful power I had in my entire collection of 108 skills... was the one that I had gotten from that slimy pile of ooze.

It hadn't seemed like it was worth much at the time, but that Ooze Quirk fit my 108 Skills to a T, like it had been made for me. Yes, yes, I'm aware of the joke potential, thank you. You see, normally my 108 stored quirks sit in their own silos or slots, none of them interacting with another, leaving me able to only access one slot at a time. The Ooze Quirk, however, had the ability to copy every quirk that its holder was touching, simultaneously. And since I was constantly touching myself - not like that, you deviant - that meant that in theory I could also use every quirk I had, simultaneously. Of course I had only copied it at 1/108th strength, so really I could only use two quirks simultaneously, but that was one more quirk than I was able to use at once before.

The possibilities were endless! It wasn't just that if I found two people with fire quirks, I could use both at the same time and have a quirk that was 1/54 of a fire quirk; heck, the reason that hero teams were so common was that 1+1 didn't always have to equal 2! I could take fire quirk and use it together with an oil quirk, or a water quirk with an electricity quirk, or a strength quirk with a size increase quirk, or a flight quirk with a wind quirk, and so on, and so on, and so on. It was a situation perfect for a loner like me who always wound up the odd man out during team activities, because now I could be on a team with myself! Out of all of the possible combinations I could use, though the most tempting was the thought of using one of my 'lesser' quirks together with All Might's Stockpile.

As far as I could tell, his Stockpile quirk (though he probably called it something cheesy like his 'I AM A HERO' quirk in badly-accented English) was part generalized strength enhancement, part power storage. While I couldn't turn off the strength enhancement, I was pretty confident that if I got used to that power that I could also use it to store up my 106 other quirks and potentially use those as one-off blasts with actual force behind them. It was everything I could have hoped for and more in a quirk… that is, if I dared to use it.

At the time, I assumed that the fact that All Might had a storage quirk was the reason that he kept the precise mechanisms of his quirk a secret; I assumed that he didn't want anybody to know that if his bank of stored-up power was exhausted, he could theoretically run out of power. The idea that I knew the secret vulnerability of the most powerful man on Earth was frankly a terrifying one. If I blabbed carelessly, I could give villains a way to destroy him; more importantly, if All Might figured out that I had stolen his power and knew his secret, who knew what he would do to keep me quiet? Sure, the media portrayal of him was that he was the nicest, most generous soul ever to walk the face of the planet, but wasn't that obviously just good P.R.?

Between the guilt I already felt for betraying All Might's kindness, and the frightening thought of what could happen if I was publicly accused of my crimes by the most powerful and popular man in the world, I was all but prepared to go home, celebrate the fact that my Quirk was a bit more useful now, and then take every necessary action to avoid ever being put into the public eye where someone could possibly figure out what I had done. Even though I still had lingering dreams of being a hero from my chuunibyou phase, even though all of the versatility and flexibility that I had prayed for my quirk to develop as a child had finally become a reality, I was still unwilling to take the risk for the mere sake of indulging my lingering childhood obsessions. Yet because of those old dreams, I couldn't quite give the idea up either.

For a few days, I teetered on the edge, torn between fear and longing, until finally I found a tiebreaker - _seething anger and contempt_.

"Yes, come in, come in. Don't worry, you two aren't in trouble, I just wanted to go over some things with you in regards to your high school applications." Although the vice-principal said that, for some reason I couldn't relax. It wasn't because he was a half-bat heteromorph, with huge ears and an unusual nose; honestly, between the coke-bottle glasses and the fuzzy sweaters the man liked to wear, he looked more like a Disney character than anything. It was because the other person in the room with me was Orimoto Kaori. She wasn't horrifying to look at either; in fact with her frizzy brown hair and wide smile she was actually pretty cute, which was the problem. You know, since I had been brutally rejected by her not so long ago.

Desperate for a distraction, I cleared my throat. "Our applications? Is there a problem?"

"Not as such, no, not as such. I just wanted to make sure that the two of you had both thought through writing U.A. as your first choice of schools, especially as your second picks were both also very competitive. You do both know that, given two students with similar scores, high schools prefer to admit the student that placed their school higher up on their list, correct?"

I nodded in assent, and next to me Orimoto did as well. "Don't worry, sir. I know how tough U.A.'s hero course is to get into," she said with a smile. "I'll be working hard this year to make sure I meet the mark."

The vice principal chuckled kindly. "Well, with your quirk Orimoto-san, I'm sure you'll have a good shot at passing the practical part of the exam - just don't forget to study hard this year so that you meet the academic requirements!" Naturally, Orimoto smiled and gave him a determined nod. Then he turned to me. "As for you, Hikigaya-kun, your average marks are high enough that you're on track to make the grade already, though that's no excuse for you to slack off, _especially_ in math and science. It's just… are you sure that you want to apply to the hero course, rather than general studies or the business course? It's true that U.A. does sometimes accept students in general studies who failed the hero course, but in your case the practical... well, UA's medical staff is excellent but … I can understand wanting to test yourself, but it's not like the level of danger is zero, you know. Does your family support your decision?"

"I -" To be honest, I was tempted. A large part of me did want to give up, wasn't ready to deal with the stress of potentially compromising the secret of having stolen a piece of All Might's power. Even more so, there was the fact that I was naturally a pretty lazy person, used to coasting on my admittedly superior intelligence, and getting into U.A. would require real, actual _work_. And finally, my whole reason for wanting to get into the hero program in the first place was to impress and emulate a girl who I had recently realized was a complete and utter hypocrite.

"Actually, sir -" But just as I was about to concede, I saw it. That subtle, half-hidden _sneer_. I'm not particularly a stranger to being looked down upon, but somehow this was different. Look down on me because you think I'm weak? Fine, so what, not like you're wrong. Because I'm antisocial? Hah, I accept your scorn with pride. But Orimoto Kaori was looking at me like I was scum. Like I was a toad lusting after a swan's flesh, that I was unworthy of breathing the same air that she breathed. That somehow, in having dared to presume that I could possibly be an equal to her in any way, that I had wronged her.

When news anchors interview superheroes on television, they ask superheroes what inspired them to take up the mantle. Typically, the answers are always something suitably inspiring - a tragedy that they witnessed or that happened to them, or an idol that they admired, something wholesome and positive. Before I become a pro for real, I'm going to have to come up with a lie that sounds better than 'to rub the fact that I got in and they didn't in my classmate's stupidly pretty face.'

"Actually, sir, my mind is made up. I'm going to U.A." I said it with conviction, and the vice-principal's bushy eyebrows rose up over the rim of his heavy glasses.

"I see. Well, work hard, young man," he said, giving me an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

And for the next ten months, that's exactly what I did.

If someone was going to make an anime of my life, well, first of all it would probably be really low-budget, because who the heck would watch anything like that? But secondly, the ten months between that meeting with the vice principal and the day of the entrance exam probably could be summarized with a several minutes-long montage that went on as inspirational music played in the background. It would have to, because the actual process of going through those ten months was incredibly tedious. Note to self: track down someone with the montage quirk. Even making training 1/108th less tedious would be a noticeable improvement!

The first scene of the montage would probably be me sitting in class, feverishly scribbling training plans into a notebook. Possibly there would be '10 km run, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 squats, EVERY SINGLE DAY' written in one corner, because that show was awesome, but most importantly for the benefit of the watchers it would have FOCUS ON TRAINING PRO-LEVEL QUIRKS written in easily-readable letters in the middle. Frankly, my fractional power copying skills were so weak that I only got a noticeable benefit out of the really powerful quirks, so the natural first step for me to take was to get comfortable and familiar with those.

Next, there would probably be a scene explaining how a lazy slacker like me actually got fit enough to pass a hero exam. Picture me sitting perfectly still glowing faintly orange and sweating profusely as I did my best to channel All Might's Stockpile, then a cutaway shot to pictures of muscles tearing, bones beginning to fracture. Then, suddenly the glow around me switches to green, as I channel Zaimokuza's Regeneration perk, and a shot of muscles and bones knitting back together, slightly stronger than before. Yeah, that's right, I figured out how to get a full-body workout done in about five minutes! Before you get too jealous, though, it's just as painful as suffering through an entire workout was, except all packed into five minutes.

Also, it didn't train cardio, so probably there would be several shots of me going running in all sorts of weather, sometimes alone, sometimes desperately trying to keep up with my little sister. You see, Komachi's quirk was sort of like mine, except superior in almost every way. If the anime was about my life, it would probably take the chance to introduce Komachi's powers now; they would show Komachi lightly skipping backwards as I ran forward with all of my might, then show her at the gym with me, holding 30-kilo plates lightly in each hand while I did my best to struggle with two hands holding just one plate, maybe even a scene of her casually doing one-handed handstands as I sweated through pushups, before finally switching to a splash page with an announcer voice-over. 'NAME: Hikigaya Komachi. QUIRK: Homomorphic Chimerization. Unlike her big brother who primarily copies Emitter quirks, Komachi only copies quirks that make physical changes to her body. Due to this, her body has the benefit of multiple passive boosts to her strength, speed, and toughness! However, those changes are limited to ones that would maintain a normal humanoid shape.' Basically, my little sister is a humanoid bio-weapon, a tyrannosaurus rex shrunk down to fit inside the body of a little girl. I swear I'm only slightly jealous.

Anyways, I _did_ have a copy of her quirk in my 108 skills. Normally, I didn't bother to copy heteromorphism quirks, since none of them had ever seemed to have any effect on me. I mean, only something like .01% of cells in the human body are replaced during any given day, and my quirk would only affect something like 1% of those, i.e. .0001%. If one hundred-thousandth of the cells in your body were made slightly more efficient, how would you even tell? However, I had a little bit of hope that something would be different this time. First, there was the fact that ever since I copied the Ooze quirk, all of my copied Transformation quirks had gotten a little bit easier to use, without quite as much soreness after. Also I was deliberately going out of my way to damage my body, thus upping the number of cells that needed to be replaced, and then using Regeneration to spur on rapid cell division multiple times a day, so I figured that if I started channeling Komachi's quirk while I healed that maybe it would eventually be noticeable?

So maybe there would be a scene in the montage where it zoomed in on an individual cell, that cell got all ooze-green and started to melt, only to reform as a larger, spikier, metallic-looking muscle cell. Maybe not, too - because I was doing so many other things to try and get stronger at the time, I still have no idea if it had any impact at all.

In between scenes of me working out, of course, there would be scenes of me experimenting with the other pro-level quirks just to remind everybody what quirks I had so far: using Death Arms' quirk to easily lift a bar that I had trouble with before, causing water to spray out of my hand like it was a garden hose from Backdraft, slowly creating a wooden staff out of an ordinary stick with Kamui Woods' quirk, creating small explosions in the palm of my hand due to Explosion Boy, and finally growing to five meters tall with Mt. Lady's quirk (I lucked out there on that last one; originally I thought that since her quirk was to grow thirteen times taller, I would only have been able to grow an extra nine inches taller, but luckily her quirk worked by increasing her _volume_ , which just happened to increase her height. Mount Lady's volume increased by a little over two thousand times, which meant I could grow in volume by a factor of not quite twenty, or an increase in height of about two and a half times.)

Then, a key change! The soundtrack gets to the good part, and the montage shows me finally running around with the Stockpile quirk active, moving so fast that my humanoid T-Rex of a little sister actually has to work hard to keep up! It shows me storing up bursts of power for the Explosion quirk to make actually respectable blasts, and me shaking out my hand in pain due to the backlash! It shows me combining Backdraft's water spray quirk with someone else's soap quirk to make a huge, bubbly mess for people to slip on! Me combining Stockpile and Death Arms to punch a small tree in half, then running away before anyone came to see what that noise was! Possibly a scene of me studying an actual textbook, just to remind viewers that I was doing that too! By the end of the ten months, I was totally ready for the pro hero test, completely certain that I was going to get in.

And then, of course, I threw all of that hard work away by jumping in front of a speeding car.


	3. And So, The Story Has Come Full Circle

If you were to ask me whether I liked dogs, I would probably have to say that I didn't. I wouldn't particularly say that I disliked them, either; they were just a category of animal that I had never held any special affection for. Before you say that dogs are amazing because they provide unlimited amounts of love and affection, I acknowledge that this is the case. However, since I already have a little sister, owning a dog would be superfluous. Besides, owning a dog requires that you walk it, pick up its bowel movements in little plastic baggies, and is just generally a lot of work; which as far as I am concerned is something to be avoided whenever possible.

So if you were to point at a culprit for me taking leave of my senses and leaping in front of a speeding car, it wouldn't be the fault of the dachshund that had slipped its leash chasing after a butterfly, or any generalized affection for all things canine on my part. No, it was that I was on my way to U.A.'s entrance exam, and so was caught up in unrealistic daydreams about being a hero. Cultural brainwashing is a scary phenomenon. Even I, who had watched firsthand as dreams of a 'successful' life turned my parents into miserable wage-slaves who only really spoke to their children on Thursdays, had somehow been hypnotized by visions of a heroic future, seduced into throwing my safety away in pursuit of an unreasonable ideal. In the moment where I tapped into Stockpile, flung myself at breakneck speed off of my bike into the middle of the road, and clutched the dachshund into a protective embrace with both arms, I could almost see that glorious road to fame and fortune stretching out before me.

The shock of the car's bumper shattering my tibia was a rude awakening. So were all the scrapes and bruises that I acquired as the strong impact at the bottom of my legs sent me spinning across the road, not just rolling from front to back but also whipping around heads over tails. I didn't stop until I slammed into the curb back-first, every muscle up and down my spine singing out in agony. I was stunned by the pain, incapable of thinking or moving, and might have passed out from the shock if the mutt in my arms hadn't whined and started licking my face.

"AHHHHHHH!" Using Zaimokuza's Regeneration Quirk was painful even at 1/108th strength. Being the cautious and sensible person that I was, I had saved up a stockpile of Regeneration in case of emergencies that was probably 20% as strong as the real thing. Unsurprisingly, using that stockpile was 20 times as painful. "AHH! Hah, hah, hah." It did its job, though - after a few seconds, my body was more or less healed, other than a bone-deep ache in my right shin.

"Young man! Young man, are you alright?"

"Ohmigosh I'm so sorry he just slipped out of my hand and it was nice out so I couldn't use my quirk to grab him and then you saved him and ohmigosh are you okay?"

Two voices overlapped as a pair of figures jogged over towards me. One was an older man wearing what looked like a liveried uniform; the other was a pretty girl in a fresh, fashionable skirt and loose t-shirt. I'll leave it to you to decipher which voice belongs to who.

"Young man, can you hear me? Do I need to call an ambulance?"

I groaned, but pushed myself up to a sitting position, keeping one arm wrapped around the dog to keep it from escaping. "Not sure yet," I called out. "Gimme a minute."

"Ah! Sable! Sable you're okay!" The girl shouted, and the dog responded back with a couple of yips. As the girl got closer I could see her more clearly; she had bright orange hair tied up into a side-bun, beautiful light brown eyes filled with thankful tears, and a grateful smile on her face, tinged with just a touch of concern. "I couldn't move fast enough and then you were all glowing orange and jumping off your bike and flying into the road and then you got hit and you were rolling and it looked bad and then you screamed but you're okay too?"

"..Ah. Yeah," I said foolishly, a little embarrassed. It had been a long time since a girl that wasn't my sister smiled at me like she meant it, I wasn't used to it! "I've got a regeneration Quirk… sort of. Here," I said, and handed the dog over to her. "Keep a better grip on him next time."

She let out a deep sigh of relief and nodded her assent. Not far behind her, the man in the uniform sighed in relief as well. "I'm very glad to hear that, young man. That was a brave and foolish thing you just did. Are you sure that you're alright? I could probably give you a ride to the hospital, or to wherever you were going if you'd prefer," he offered.

I narrowed my eyes in irritation. Where the heck did he get off, calling me foolish! I knew that damn well myself without anybody telling me! "The way that _you_ drive?" I scoffed, my lips curling up slightly into a vicious grin as he flinched. Slowly, I pushed my way to my feet, wincing in pain as I put weight on my right foot. Apparently I had been hit so hard that even a 20x stockpile of Regeneration hadn't healed me completely. I sneered as I looked at the driver. "There's these laws called speed limits. Maybe you've heard of them? I hear it's a lot easier to brake suddenly if you're going at a safe speed. No offense meant," I lied, "but I think I'll be safer on my bike." With satisfaction, I watched as his face turned slightly purple from humiliation. He bowed to me formally, turned, got back in his pricey-looking black towncar, and just started driving away. Curiously, I noted that there had been someone in the back seat, but the windows were tinted so I couldn't really make out any facial features as the car drove away.

"Ah hah hah hah hah.." the orange-haired girl laughed nervously, still holding onto her dog. She flinched a little bit when I looked at her, but after seeing that I wasn't about to start criticizing her like I did the driver, she smiled at me once again. "Thank you so much for saving Sable! I'm really sorry, there's somewhere that I have to be soon or I'll be late so I can't stay or thank you right away, but is there a way that I can get in contact with you later to thank you properly?"

For some reason, the word _late_ resonated in my brain. Crap! The admission test! "Ah, no, I actually have to leave now too. Like, right now. Don't worry about thanking me really!"

Just as I was turning to leave, she called out. "Wait!" she said, and I suddenly felt a hug envelop me from behind, two warm, squishy sensations pressing themselves against my back. At the same time, my clothes started squirming and rearranging themselves, pieces of torn fabric realigning themselves and stitching themselves back together, other pieces stained by blood or dirt shaking themselves out and cleaning them. She released me, and I turned to look at her. She was blushing fiercely, and I could feel my own face getting equally hot. "Um, your clothes." She said, looking off to the side. "I could fix them with my quirk, so. Anyways. Thank you!"

"Aah. Thanks. And you're welcome," I said, too embarrassed to say much more, and I started walking away for real this time, heading back towards my bike. I looked over my shoulder a few times as I left, watching the girl whose name I never got go her own way. She waved a couple of times in my direction as she did before finally turning a corner and disappearing. For a little while, I felt incredibly proud of myself, basking in the warm endorphins from being hugged and the thrill of success. Then I picked up my fallen bicycle, only to see that the front wheel was completely bent out of shape. "Crap."

Left with no other option, I started jogging towards U.A., dragging my bike along as best I could. With brute strength and Death Arms' quirk I had gotten the wheel so that it was more or less straight, but it definitely wasn't rideable. Worse, as I jogged along, every step I took came with a jolt of pain in my right leg, and I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to use it in an actual exam. What the heck I had been doing? Why hadn't I asked for some sort of compensation? Or bothered finding out if my leg and bike were okay before I let that guy leave? Was it that much fun, playing the hero and looking cool? There are villains that hit even harder than speeding cars, there are heroes that die every year, am I really okay with throwing myself into danger like that? As nice as that hug felt… was it really worth it?

My plans for the test had originally been to arrive early, scout out the other test-takers, and possibly to surreptitiously bump into a few likely candidates before the test started, but by the time I made it to the exam location everyone was already filing in the door. With no chance to copy other quirks, and a leg that was sure to break again if I tried using it while tapping into Stockpile, I was feeling incredibly unconfident of actually passing the exam. Honestly, I probably would have written the whole thing off as a loss, probably even should have. But if I had, then anyone would have been able to search my name on the list of examinees and see that I didn't take the test after all, and there was no way in hell that I was giving Orimoto Kaori that kind of satisfaction. Plus, hey, you never knew, maybe there would be a chance to pick up some quirks in the practical.

So I locked up my battered bicycle, caught up to the tail end of students entering, and did my best to suffer through the written examination while ignoring the pain of simultaneously channeling Regeneration into my leg, hoping to recover it even just a little bit more before I had to use it again. I was so distracted by the pain that I accidentally wrote down my actual thoughts on heroics in the writing prompt, only remembering halfway through that I was supposed to be writing about why I _wanted_ to be a hero. Math and Science were never strong subjects of mine to begin with, but with my leg aching I wound up unable to focus, just applying whatever formulas I remembered by rote and hoping for the best. Probably the only bright spots in my entire exam were Literature and History, but even there I'm sure I wound up making mistakes that I otherwise wouldn't have.

Even before the practical, I was already pretty sure that I had failed. Despite that, when time was up, I filed into the auditorium with everybody else, determined to see things through one way or another.

"EVERYBODY SAY HE~Y!" I winced. Ugh, noisy! To my utter lack of surprise, nobody said 'hey' back to Present Mic, who was apparently not only a pro hero and a radio DJ, but also a teacher. Oi oi, if I became a hero, would I have to take three jobs to make ends meet too? No, calm down, he probably just has a frivolous personality and terrible financial discipline to go with his terrible taste in music. Oh, wait, he's actually starting to explain things, I should start paying attention... Okay, so we use our quirks, beat up robots in a fake city, get more points for stronger robots, no attacking other candidates. Simple enough, I guess. And here's the handout for the robots, why are there -

And just as I was thinking that, some moron started shouting. "May I ask a question? There appear to be no fewer than four types of villains on this handout! Such a blatant error, if it is one, is unbecoming of U.A., Japan's top hero academy! Blah blah blah blah blah, I have an enormous stick lodged in my rectum, someone should probably make sure I'm not smuggling prohibited materials into the exam room! I'm clearly afraid nobody else here will notice how morally superior to them I think I am!"

… Yeah. That rule about not attacking other candidates was a good one, because otherwise I would have been _tempted_. Granted, it was probably good that he clarified that there was a massive robot that gave us no points to beat in the exam location, but jeez, what a jerk. Inwardly, I felt bad for the green-haired kid he had shouted at. Who looked a little familiar, actually, was he from my school? Before I could figure out just who I was looking at, though, we broke up into our assigned groups for the practical exam. I was still limping a little bit as I followed all of the other students, despite having spent multiple hours of the written exam trying to heal my leg. The exam was only ten minutes long, so I could probably run on it normally for that long, but using Stockpile while moving was absolutely out of the question. That was going to make things trickier.

Well, it wasn't like I had no options at all. Since we had been given the option to bring what equipment was necessary to use our quirks, I had brought a wooden baseball bat with me. As we waited in front of the mock cityscape for the exam to start, I started channeling my stored reserves of Kamui Woods' quirk and commanded the wood to grow. A few of the other students nearby looked at me with impressed looks on their faces as my baseball bat swiftly grew, rapidly coming to resemble an enormous war club or tetsubo, one that was rapidly growing so heavy that I had to struggle to lift it. The pro hero Ectoplasm, who was overseeing the exam, turned his black-helmeted face in my direction with what I thought was a curious look, but evidently whatever I was doing wasn't too against the rules, because he didn't say anything to me about it.

Instead, he just shouted "And…. START!" There was a few seconds of delay, then suddenly everyone came to the same realization that I had - the test was on. Quickly, I began the second phase of my plan. As soon as I got enough clear space around me, I switched quirks to Mt. Lady and instantly saw the ground drop away from me as I grew to nearly triple my current height. The heavy war-club in my hands, which previously had been so bulky that I could barely manage to carry it, appeared to shrink down until it was once again a comfortable fit in my hands. With Mt. Lady's quirk active I was roughly 20 times stronger than normal, and if I used Death Arms' quirk at the same time I could push that up by another 20% or so in just my arms. It would have to be enough.

Despite the fact that I was so much bigger and heavier, because Mt. Lady's Quirk strengthened her body to match her size, the situation didn't put any additional stress on my leg; I was still limping, but only a little, and the length of my stride helped put me at the front of the pack of examinees. Within a few seconds I was among a pack of robots, which though larger than human sized were only up to about the size of my waist. Grinning like a madman, I decided to use them to take out some of my frustration. WHAM! The head of a robot went flying as I used my war club like the baseball bat it had originally started as and hit a home run. SMASH! A machine prepared to leap at me, only to be hammered into the ground by an overhead swing. BANG! I used the war club like a battering ram, shoving the robot into the wall. OOOORRRAAAH! I lifted a robot up by the legs and threw it into another robot! For the first few minutes, I was actually feeling pretty good about myself and how I was doing!

And then the two and three-point villains started showing up. Not only bigger than the one-pointers, they were also more heavily armored, the sorts of targets that required either overwhelming force or precision damage to defeat. Glancing ruefully at my war club, I saw that it was already starting to splinter, the hastily grown wood no match over the long term for solid steel. Sighing, I shrunk back down to my normal height, tossing the now useless lump of wood aside as I did. From there on out, I was down to one or two Stockpiled explosions, one or two Stockpiled Death Arms Punches, a Backdraft Blast or two, and two or three stored up uses of miscellaneous quirks before I would be out of useful abilities. What's worse was, since they all required Stockpile to be useful, I basically would have to stand still while using any of them or risk re-breaking my leg, this time without any Regeneration saved up to fix it afterwards.

Well, I had a good run, but it was time to go to Plan B: looking for people to pretend to help out or save so that I could copy their quirks. My leg still hurt, but I ran at full speed anyways, adrenaline numbing the pain until it felt distant and unimportant. Not far from me, a pink-skinned girl was trying to bait a three-pointer into stepping onto a field of goo that she had laid down. I stopped, braced myself so that my weight was on my left leg, and tapped into Stockpile and Backdraft simultaneously. Almost painlessly my right hand shifted into a metallic water cannon, and a jet of compressed water rocketed forth, striking the robot from the side and sending it sliding over the field of pink acidic goo until it impacted the side of the building.

"Hey, this one's mine!" She said, skating over the slippery goo field to get closer to it and finish it off before I could steal it.

"I know, you're welcome!" I shouted back, turning away for now. I'd press her for a high-five or something like that after the exam was done. Further along past her, I saw a guy who looked like he was made completely out of metal, trying to chase down a fast-moving 2-pointer so that he could tear into it. I rushed up to it and grabbed its leg, very temporarily tapped into Stockpile, and used a saved-up explosion to blow its leg off at the knee. As the thing skidded to the halt, I ran past the steel-guy and clapped him on the shoulder, shouting "All yours!"

My hand ached from the explosion as I ran past, his confused cries of "wait, weren't you the giant guy?" following me as I left him to his prize. Shortly, I came into a giant plaza full of people and robots fighting, almost too many for me to choose from. A bird-headed young man picked a robot up with his shadow and crushed it in midair, a blonde girl fired arrow after arrow of what looked like solid light into metal chassis, a good-looking ikemen bastard flew carefreely above the plaza, swooping down to tear at vulnerable wires and weak spots.

I knew that time was running out, so I just lunged at the closest 3-pointer, waiting until I had grabbed its leg until simultaneously tapping Stockpile and Death Arms. In an instant, my arm strength surged even above where it was while using Mt. Lady's quirk, and I hoisted the metal body of the 'villain' up enough that its vulnerable underbelly was exposed. "Shoot!" I shouted at the girl firing the laser arrows, and she obliged, her energy blasts gouging into the unarmored metal. It started to spark and burn so I dropped it and skipped back a few steps, winding up not too far from the girl who had defeated it.

"You know those points are mine, right?" She said, tossing her head back imperiously. Her blonde hair fell in actual ringlets, and I was half tempted to poke her to see if she was an anime character.

Instead I just shrugged, then jumped towards her to pull out of the way of a Level 2 that was barreling towards us from behind. "Watch your back!" I shouted, then took off running for another target. I managed to find another pack of one-pointers and briefly jumped back up to giant size to deal with them, although now that I had lost my club I had to throw them about bare-handed or smash them into each other in order to take them out.

Just as I was finishing those robots off, the earth shook. A massive, colossal robot slowly rose above the mock cityscape. The Zero-Pointer. It was the sort of opponent that we didn't need to try to defeat, something better off evaded as quickly as possible. An obstacle, not an enemy.

So naturally, that was when my half-healed leg finally decided to give out. As I started stepping away from the Zero-Pointer, I stepped on a piece of rubble that rolled under my foot. Suddenly, all my weight was being placed on my leg from the side, rather than from the top, and under the misdirected pressure my shin gave out with an incredibly painful snap. I screamed in pain for the second time that day, my eyes watering as I did my best to get out from underfoot despite the broken leg. A few feet at a time, I crawled out of the path of destruction, whimpering and trying not to sob as I did so. Despite my best efforts, however, for a second I was convinced that I wind up underneath one of the Zero-Pointer's giant metal feet despite every safety precaution that U.A. had taken.

And then suddenly, she arrived. A girl with long, black hair and ice-blue eyes was suddenly standing before me, while at the same time the air went from a warmish March afternoon to the middle of bleak winter. The humidity in the air spontaneously condensed into snowflakes as she grabbed the descending metal foot, her body glowing in a soft white light as she held it above her head, seemingly effortlessly. Between the snow and the glow she looked like a yuki-onna, a myth come to life. She turned over her shoulder to look at me. "Get away from here before you get frostbite," she said in a studiously neutral voice. "I've got it under control."

If I could have put any weight on my leg, I would have. Instead, I painfully pushed myself up until I was kneeling on my right knee. "Not really an option," I said through gritted teeth. "Let's work together. Push on three!" And with that, I tapped into my last unused combination of pro-level quirks, All Might's Stockpile and Mt. Lady's Gigantification. Mt. Lady's quirk was normally a bad one for combining with Stockpile. Before I saved up enough stored power to match Mt. Lady's maximum height, all that the saved power went to height and none of it went to duration. In other words, unless I saved a simply ludicrous amount of power, I was never going to be able to use Stockpile to boost my height above 5 meters for more than a couple of seconds at most.

However, in this situation, a couple of seconds was all I needed. I surged up under the Zero-Pointer's center of mass at a breakneck pace. After a mere second of the boost, my arms were long enough that I could wrap them around the back leg of the robot, the one not being held by the yuki-onna girl to my right. Eventually, I was as tall as I was going to get, about half the Zero-Pointer's size. As soon as I hit my maximum height and strength, I shouted "THREE!" and lifted and pulled as hard as I could, trying to remove the Zero-pointer's footing. To my right, I could feel the air get even colder, and the force on the robot we were both opposing getting even stronger, until suddenly that foot of the robot lifted as well and it began tipping backwards. Once we had it in the air, I switched towards pushing, attempting to wrestle the thing down to the ground.

The Zero-Pointer hit the ground with a crash almost loud enough to drown out the sound of a high-pitched whistle blowing and calling the examination period to the end. Kindly, the beautiful yuki-onna girl reached down to offer me her hand. Almost reflexively I took it, copying her quirk as I did so. "Thanks," I muttered. It was a great quirk, something along the lines of absorbing ambient heat energy in order to boost her physical strength and speed, but given that she had put herself in harm's way to rescue me I felt a little bit guilty in copying it.

Surprisingly, the beautiful girl pulling me to my feet shook her head. "I was just doing what I should have," she said, and I blinked at her in confusion. I was about to ask her what she meant by that when I heard an older, unfamiliar voice.

"All right, all right now. Who's injured? Yes, come here dearie." Surprisingly, there was an elderly woman walking through the crowd of examinees, bestowing a healing quirk with a kiss. It vaguely reminded me of a pro hero that I had heard of before - Nurse Girl, maybe? - and with the help of the Yuki-onna girl I limped over to get fixed up, readying myself to copy yet another useful quirk as I did so.

Fun fact: Recovery Girl's Heal Quirk operates using the same bodily resources as Zaimokuza's Regeneration Quirk. Not more than a few seconds after her lips touched my skin, I felt a sudden surge of fatigue and collapsed unconscious, out like a light. I woke up sometime in the late evening with an I.V. in my arm and was eventually sent home with some admonishments against overdoing things, with my hopes of stealing quirks in the after-exam camaraderie dashed and my hopes of passing the entrance exam similarly low.

It was a long walk home. The wheels of my busted bicycle squeaked insistently as I trudged through the chilly night air. It had been a crazy day. Saving a girl's dog, being saved by a girl, cutting loose with my quirk, writing what had to be the worst essay ever to disgrace the U.A. admissions process… for all that I was inconvenienced by the lack of a working bicycle, I was perversely glad for the lonesome silence and the opportunity to stop and think. Somehow, I felt as though a ghost had been exorcised from me. I knew I had most likely failed the exam, but I had done so without compromising, without regrets, and while giving it everything I had. Somehow, I felt relieved that I could finally put my childish dreams to rest.

When the rejection letter finally arrived, it was a Thursday. For once, my parents were home, and we were all sitting around the living room like a facsimile of a loving family. "Hey, Onii-chan, what's this?" Komachi asked, waving the envelope around. "It feels like there's something heavy in it."

Focusing my eyes on it, I recognized the seal. "My rejection letter from U.A., probably," I said. Komachi, of course, had heard a lightly edited account of the whole saga, and how her heroic brother had given up his chance at attending his dream school in order to save the life of a pet of a random passerby. "Go ahead and open it."

"AH HA HA HA HA! NEVER FEAR, FOR I AM HERE… as a holographic recording!" Holy crap, that was All Might. Damn, U.A. took their rejection letters seriously these days. "Young Hikigaya, I cannot tell you how happy I am that the flames of your youth were not dampened by the incident eleven months ago!" Wait, he remembers me? No way, he probably has staff that keeps track of these things for him. "Unfortunately, while the written portion of your exam was just barely a pass," whoa, I actually passed? No way! "Unfortunately, you only received seven Villain Points during the practical exam, not nearly enough to make the mark."

I sighed, and shrugged my arms. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Man, they recorded a video just to tell me -"

"And if villain points were the only measure by which you were being judged, you would not be receiving this message!" What. "RESCUE POINTS!" What. "To be a hero is to help other people!" What, no. Stop. "Every time that you helped another student during the exam, our team of judges voted on whether to award you points, and how many points they gave you." No, no, stop, I was only stealing Quirks. They had to have noticed, right? "On multiple occasions during the exam, you put your own personal gain at risk in order to assist other students!" My parents and my little sister were all beaming at me with pride, and I felt sick to my stomach. "Young man, you earned more than enough rescue points to qualify as a student of U.A.!" No, stop, you're wrong! "However, young man, I will admit that your essay on your heroic motivations did give us some pause." Oh thank god. "After all, U.A.'s hero course is a course for heroes, first and foremost!"

"Onii-san, what the heck did you write?" Komachi asked accusingly, only to be shushed by my mother.

"Uhm, excuse me?" It was a soft voice that only I sort of recognized, until I saw a girl with a shock of orange hair talking to a holographic recording of Ectoplasm, and realized where I had heard it. "There's this boy with dark hair who was limping today… um, he wasn't in my group for the practical, but he saved my dog from being run over a car this morning, and he broke his leg. He said he had a regeneration quirk, but… um, he didn't look all the way better when I saw him later, so if there's anything I can do… anyway, I just thought you should know."

"Ah, yes, I beg your pardon." This voice was garbled, as though it had been obscured by voice changing software. "I'm sorry to admit this, but my driver was speeding on the way to the exam location, and nearly ran over a dog that had run into the road. A student taking your exam saved the dog, at the cost of breaking his leg. I'm afraid that he might have failed the practical… no? Oh, that's such a relief. What? A recording? No, I'd rather stay anonymous, thank you."

"Young Hikigaya, your heroic deeds were not in vain!" All Might's face, big and beaming, made it front and center into the holographic projection. "While we cannot in fairness give you any rescue points outside of the examination period, your actions were more than enough to ease whatever doubts we had as to your character! Young man. You have passed! Welcome to the Heroics course at U.A.!"

Looking at the smiling face of All Might in the hologram, and the faces of my family all around me beaming with pride, I just barely made it into the bathroom before I threw up.


	4. Despite Being Different, Some Things

**A/N: Thanks so much everyone for your kind reviews! Here's the chapter.**

Even before I copied All Might's Quirk and got strong enough to become a hero, even while I was being mocked and teased by my classmates for my quirk's uselessness, I was always firmly convinced that my quirk had a lot of potential. There are a surprising number of quirks that, if weakly copied, can still be quite useful. Before the Tatooin incident, I made a habit of trying to find quirks like that, and some of the fractional quirks that I developed from those efforts are so useful that I would never trade them away, even for pro-level quirks. Anyway, with 108 slots available for me to choose from, keeping a few 'Lifestyle' quirks around wasn't exactly a hassle.

In addition to the Quirk I had that guaranteed me a good night's sleep, I also had an 'efficient digestion' quirk that was the downgraded version of an 'eat anything' ability, a downgraded version of a 'telescopic vision' quirk that was useful for *ahem* innocuous reasons, and a radio broadcasting quirk that when copied could only send out infrared waves - useless for transmitting data over long distances, but priceless for changing channels on the TV across the room.

Right now, I was using a quirk that heated up the skin to red-hot levels, a useful offensive and defensive quirk that made its wielder a very difficult opponent in close combat. At 1/108 strength, it was useless in combat, heating up the skin only by a couple of degrees. In other words, it was perfect for pretending to be sick.

My parents didn't question my sudden turn of sickness that night. Why should they have? It's only natural to want to believe the best of your loved ones, and for all of my parents' faults, the fact that they love me was never really in question. The fact is, given a convenient excuse to avoid thinking uncomfortable thoughts, most people will take it, nine times out of ten. Stopping to wonder whether my hot forehead was genuine would have forced them to stop thinking all those shiny happy thoughts about how successful their son was, so they didn't, as selfishly and predictably as that. Also predictably, Komachi came in a couple of times during the evening, just watching me from the doorframe. Every time, I almost opened my mouth to say something, but in the end I just kept my eyes closed and my head down until finally I abused my Quirk to force myself to sleep.

I woke the next day with a clearer head and an empty house. With my parents gone to work, and my sister off to school, I could finally sit and try to figure out just what the heck I was going to do next. My admission notice stared balefully at me from the coffee table, the official paper copies having been thoughtfully arranged in a tidy pile for me by my parents underneath the … video message doohickey, which was holding them down like a paperweight. There it was, in black and white.

Name: Hikigaya Hachiman. Quirk: 108 Skills. Villain points: 7. Rescue Points: 28. Total Points: 35. Practical Exam Rank: 36th. Written Exam Score: 319/400.

Admission status: ACCEPTED.

Arrrrrgh, what was I going to do?! Collapsing dramatically on the couch, I clasped my hands to my face and barely resisted the urge to scream into a pillow. After a few seconds of intense self-pity, I finally got a little bit of a grip.

Calm down, Hachiman, I thought to myself. Think about it logically. What are my options? Turn down the admission offer and go to Sobu? Eurgh. My parents would freak, Komachi would be disappointed, and U.A.'s admission records are public information, which means that I'd almost certainly be 'the guy who turned down U.A.' by the end of the first week. No way. Not unless there's no choice.

Go to U.A. and try to go pro? … Pfffahahaha no. I failed that entrance exam. I broke my leg just rescuing a stupid dog. I only made it in because a couple of girls thought they were doing me a favor by pitying me. No, even I - especially I - know I'd make a pretty lousy hero.

So then, what? Go to U.A., but ask to be switched to the General Education track? That could work. I'm sure I'm not the only student who realizes part-way through that they're not cut out to be a pro. Even All Might said at first they weren't sure I was cut out to be a hero… actually, wait. Why did All Might say that, and not, say, a teacher at U.A.? Is it just that he's popular and an alumnus, so they had him record the messages for fanservice?

Maybe it says in the video, I thought, and I reached out to turn the hologram doohickey back on. I cringed my way through the overly hokey message, but with forewarning and in the cold light of day, it wasn't quite as awful as it had been the night before. To my surprise, however, the recording continued after the point that I had left it at the night before. "Welcome to the Heroics course at U.A.! The number one program for pro heroics in the country! Where you will receive a world-class education in both traditional subjects and the art of heroism from an all-star cast of pro heroes - and for the first time ever this year, from yours truly, ALL MIGHT! Yes, that is correct, I will be one of your teachers as well! I look forward to seeing you here young man, so study hard, and I'll see you in April!"

What.

Why was All Might, the number one pro in Japan, a man who had fan clubs that recorded sightings of his everywhere from Hokkaido to Kyushu, suddenly settling down at U.A. to teach? He's not doing it because of me, right? No, that's stupid. If the most powerful man in Japan wants to do something about me stealing his quirk, he has lots of ways to do it that don't involve becoming a high school teacher.

Your essay on your heroic motivations did give us some pause, I heard again in my head, and frowned. That wasn't really the sort of thing you'd normally put in a message like this, was it?

Onii-chan, what the heck did you write?

Well, let's see… I argued that society was stealing from heroes, which is certainly an opinion that's valid to be concerned about coming from an aspiring hero. I pointed out that All Might would make more money as a warlord than a hero, also not something an idealistic youth would normally point out. I called the majority of heroes fame-obsessed celebrities, with the most powerful being the most obsessed. Which since it was going to be scored by heroes, specifically the most powerful hero in Japan, does come off as a little specifically insulting. It's not like I knew All Might would be reading it! And then I…

I made some jokes about granting quirks to people, didn't I?

All Might's quirk could hypothetically be used to grant a quirk to someone, couldn't it?

The details of All Might's quirk are a secret, aren't they?

And right after I made an offhand reference to knowing All Might's secret, I then implied that I was desperate for fame and fortune… which strikes me as the sort of thing that a celebrity with secrets to keep might feel paranoid about.

Did I accidentally blackmail All Might so I could get admitted to U.A.? What did he say, 'our team of judges voted on whether to award you rescue points - and how many of those points to give you'. That sounds like the sort of thing that would be easy to fudge, if I were the sort of person who was inclined for some reason to do that. And that paper said that I came in thirty-sixth place, out of how many?

Almost in a panic, I grabbed for my laptop and looked up U.A.'s official results page. Sure enough, my name was on the list in thirty-sixth place - PASS. Right below me in thirty-seventh place was some kid named Minoru Mineta, with thirty-four total points, one less than mine. And next to his name was the word FAIL.

Out of forty students admitted this year, four were admitted through recommendations, and thirty-six were admitted via the practical, which meant that I was in last place. And had maybe, possibly, stolen that place from Minoru Mineta, someone who probably actually wanted to be a hero, all because I had blackmailed the person who saved my life.

What did the message say? "Your actions were more than enough to ease whatever doubts we had as to your character?" Does that mean that he's okay with it, but only because I looked like I wanted to be a hero so bad that I was willing to do anything for it? Did that mean that if I stopped looking like a wannabe hero, he'd raise a fuss?

Or on the other hand, maybe everything was fine, and he didn't interpret my offhand comments as blackmail, and the only reason he said anything at all was because of all of the legitimate reasons he would have had to be concerned about that stupid essay. Maybe there was a perfectly logical reason for All Might to be teaching at U.A., and it had nothing to do with keeping me on the straight and narrow, or making sure that I was actually someone 'heroic' enough not to share his secret. Really, how paranoid and self-centered could I be?

All things considered, though, I was going to pretend to be a hero until I found out one way or the other. Just in case.

The next few weeks passed in in an uncomfortable haze of backhanded congratulations and confused looks. No-one around me had any idea how to adjust their expectations of me from 'embarrassing loser' to 'guy in the top 0.5% of U.A. applicants'. Let me tell you, there was a certain amount of private satisfaction that I got from seeing everyone's faces. I didn't quite get to rub my victory in Orimoto's face like I had planned; somehow, she had gotten in as well, but I did win a very satisfactory consolation prize.

Teenagers being the naturally jealous creatures that they are, someone took the fact that I had rather publicly confessed to Orimoto in the past and put it together with the fact that we were both going to be attending U.A. in the fall, and had concocted a rumor that Orimoto and I were some kind of Destined Couple that had sworn to get in together with each other or some such nonsense. I denied the rumors of course, but rather than giving people a flat denial and explaining that I wasn't even interested in her anymore, my denials somehow wound up being full of blushes and had me unable to meet anyone's eyes. Somehow, people took this as a confirmation of the rumors. It was petty of me, probably. Okay, it was certainly petty of me. But there were only two weeks until graduation, and I had been the butt of jokes and rumors because of her for nearly a year, so upon further reflection I didn't really feel that guilty about it.

Other than that, though, not much changed about my everyday life. I didn't magically become more popular, Orimoto didn't magically fall in love with me (though she did switch from covertly sneering in my direction when she saw me in the hallways to faking brittle smiles), and I was still more or less left alone. Getting into U.A. was the sort of thing that should have had some sort of impact, but with roughly two weeks left before the end of the school year, one of which would just be final exams that I was now exempt from since I had already passed U.A.'s written test, pretty much nobody was in the mood to be making new friends. All of that time and work that I had put into proving that my quirk was actually useful, and the only measurable benefit it had on my middle school life was that when my usual gym partner skipped class, someone else actually buddied up with me for the exercise instead of leaving me to awkwardly play against the wall like usual.

And so my middle school days ended, leaving me just as unpopular as I had been when they began. As Komachi would have put it, maybe I should have put all of that time and effort into my personality instead. Well, it wasn't like it really mattered. In a couple more weeks, I'd be at U.A., where hopefully I wouldn't have to put up with teenage drama or petty bullshit.

Not that there was any chance of that, of course, but it was a nice daydream while it lasted.

After experiencing that car accident the first time I biked to U.A., I left myself plenty of extra time to get to school on the first day. This time my bike was brand new, a congratulatory present from my parents that they probably spent way too much money on. Between the lightweight composite frame and the reinforced drivetrain suitable for riders with superhuman strength, I felt like I was practically flying down the road. In the winter or in bad weather I would probably want to take a train, but on a nice day like this one a half-hour ride wasn't too terrible.

The closer I got to U.A., though, the more nervous I got. I was worried about All Might, about whether or not I would do well in the pro-hero classes, about whether I would get along with people in my classes. Most of all, I was hoping that they would do what they did for the entrance exams and split people from the same high schools apart into different classes, because I was really not looking forward to being stuck in a class with Orimoto Kaori.

So as I walked up to the enormous door to Classroom 1-A, I took a deep breath and crossed my fingers before pulling the handle, saying a silent prayer that I would be able to get to know my new classmates without middle school rumors or drama tainting their first impressions of me. The answer to my prayers was a mixed bag. Although I didn't have class with Orimoto, there were a lot of faces that I somehow recognized.

"Ah! It's you!" The first person I noticed was the girl who was currently shouting and staring directly at me. She had orange hair tied up in a side bun, sparkling red eyes, and a surprised smile on her face that grew even wider as I looked at her. Without knowing why, I felt myself start to blush. "Mou, geez, you should have said you were taking the hero test too! My parents would totally have given you a ride! I felt so guilty when I realized you biked all the way here from Funabashi even after you got hit by a car!"

I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment. "Ah, well…" Aaaah! A pretty girl is talking to me! My life of lonerdom has not prepared me for this! "Thanks for saying something. You know, to the teachers. It helped. Really."

"Whoa, dude, you got hit by a car on exam day and took the test anyway?" A guy with spikey red-dyed hair and a muscular build asked. "That's super manly!"

"He jumped right in front of a speeding car to save my dog," the orangette said enthusiastically, "Broke his leg and everything. If he hadn't had a regeneration quirk, well… thank goodness you did!" she said, beaming at me once again. "I'm so sorry, if I'd realized you were going to be here I would have brought chocolates or cookies or something… ah! I never even got your name!"

"It's fine," I said, "Really. You told the teachers about it before you even knew if you got in, so… you don't really owe me anything." All of a sudden, I was the center of attention for the entire classroom, and it was making me profoundly uncomfortable. More than a few people were crowding around the orangette and I, some of whom I recognized; I was pretty sure that I had assisted both the pink-skinned girl and the blonde girl with ringlets in her hair during my entrance exam, and had probably seen both the bird-headed boy and the tall blonde there as well. The two most recognizable people in the room to me, however, were both sitting. Sitting in the back row was the long-haired traditional Japanese beauty who had rescued me from the Zero-Pointer, while one row from the front with his feet up on his desk was the spiky, blond-haired asshole who had been used as a human shield with me by a lunatic villain with an Ooze quirk.

Man, what a small world, I thought. "Hikigaya Hachiman," I said, "Nice to meet you again."

"Yuigahama Yui," she replied. "Nice to meet you too."

That opened the floodgates for a barrage of names as everyone else came to introduce themselves as well. Kirishima Eijirou, Miura Yumiko, Hayama Hayate, Tobe Kakeru, Tohru Hagakure, Mina Ashido - I felt bad, knowing that I was going to forget all of them within minutes, but this sort of popularity was way outside of my experience. It wouldn't last, of course, but for a few minutes… I admit, it was kind of cool.

Naturally, someone ruined it almost immediately. "You said your name was Hikigaya, right?" I turned to see the blonde kid with the spiky hair looking at me. He gave me kind of a shit-eating grin, and I braced myself inwardly.

"That's me." I replied cautiously. "And you are…"

"Bakugo Katsuki," he said with a cocky grin. "The first-place finisher on the exam. And since you're Hikigaya, I think that makes you... last place."

Really? You made a point of remembering who came in last, just so that you could talk down to them? And you remembered the name of the guy in last place, but not the face of the guy who got kidnapped by a villain with you? I bit down on my instinctive response - several of them - and finally just shrugged. "Just means I've got nowhere to go but up," I said.

"Hmph." With a self satisfied smirk, he settled back down into his chair. "There's always out the door, you know. What'd I score, eleven times more villain points than you? Seriously, with scores like that, can you really call yourself a hero?"

The tall blonde-haired guy - Hayama? Sayama? Saitama? No, that can't be it, he's not bald - stepped in to intervene. "Hey, hey, come on, guys. No sense picking fights on our first day, right?"

You know what? Fine. Enough playing nice. I raised a hand to ward Hayama off. "It's fine." I said, a sneer creeping onto my face. "Hey Bakugo, speaking of calling yourself a hero, do you still mug little kids at the Tatooin arcade for their pocket money?"

"What the -" Bakugo said, suddenly disarmed by the direction the conversation had taken. "- No! I don't do kiddy shit like that anymore!"

"Because it'd look bad on your resume when you went pro, right?" I asked, enjoying the feeling of having a conceited bastard on the back foot. "Not because you suddenly decided to become a nicer person or anything like that."

All of a sudden, the classroom was filled with a familiar sound, the sound of accusing whispers and muffled sounds of condemnation, the sound of social exclusion - and for once, it wasn't aimed at me!

"You don't know anything about me," Bakugo said, "So shut up before I blow you to smithereens!"

"Tsk, tsk. Violent threats, very heroic," I drawled. "Between that and the history of petty crime, so far, to me it looks like the person in this classroom who'd have the hardest time going pro… that's probably you, isn't it?" Bakugo's scowl deepened, and he looked about ready to bite back before a third voice intervened.

"You're wrong!" Both of us turned towards the entrance to the classroom to see a shortish kid with green hair, someone who I immediately recognized as the third member of the 'Tatooin Trio', the kid who thought he could rescue us by throwing his backpack at the villain. "Kacchan is - K-K-Katsuki is a little rough around the edges, b-b-but he's going to be a great hero one day!"

"Shut the fuck up, Deku! I didn't ask for your help!" Bakugo shouted, turning towards the green-haired kid with at least double the anger he'd had while talking to me.

Taking the chance while he was distracted yelling at his friend, I slipped away to find my seat and offload my backpack. It's a lot easier to get the last word in a conversation when you leave halfway through! I was in a pretty decent spot, one row from the back and up against the wall. Not quite an Anime Protagonist Seat right by the window, but it still beat having a spot in the middle of everything. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the people who had been looking at me previously because of Yuigahama's story were still looking at me, now more curiously than before. I shifted uncomfortably under the attention.

Almost as soon as I had gotten situated, a dour voice spoke out from the front of the classroom. "If you're here to socialize, then get out. This is the hero course." Almost instantaneously, everyone in the class quieted down. From the doorway, a man wearing a full sleeping bag hopped into the room and then began to unzip himself… or phrased another way, began to slip the sleeping bag off of his shoulders.

This was our teacher? He looked like a bum! Slowly, all conversation in the room came to a halt at the sight of this figure, a tall, scruffy-looking man in black clothes and a long white scarf.

"It took you all ten seconds to quiet down," he said, a slight frown on his face. "First rule of being a pro, time is a precious resource, so don't waste it on idle chatter. I'm Aizawa Shota, your homeroom teacher. All of you, get your gym clothes on and head outside."

"But what about the entrance ceremony? Or our guidance sessions?" A brown-haired, rosy-cheeked girl asked.

"They're a waste of time." Well, sure, everyone knew that, but this is the first time I've ever seen someone treat that problem with the seriousness it deserved! "Gym uniforms, on the grounds, ten minutes. Be there on time or go home. We're doing a quirk assessment test."

A quirk assessment test, huh? Looks like I'll be getting some new quirks to copy earlier than expected.


	5. Surprisingly, Hikigaya Hachiman is

**A/N: Since I am cross-posting this to SB and SV, if you want a list of all the changes from canon 1-A and the quirks of the Oregairu characters, check the threads there, I'll have them available in a day or two.**

 **Thank you again everyone for all of your reviews! They are the fuel that keeps me motivated on this wild NaNoWriMo ride. With that, here's the chapter.**

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Some of my favorite days that I had in Junior High school were when we took the No-Quirk Gym Tests. Since my quirk was barely useable to begin with, it was one of the few chances I had to compete with people on an even level. Because I got around basically everywhere by bicycle, I was actually pretty fit, and it wasn't unusual for me to be at the top of the Emitter-Quirk or even Transformation-Quirk rankings for my year before I started cheating at workouts using Stockpile and Regeneration. Afterwards, I was almost always first for everyone except kids with Mutation quirks, and often scored higher than even a few of them. Basically, my high physical capabilities without using my quirk were one of the few things about me that I could point to with pride!

So I shouldn't have been surprised when Aizawa-sensei immediately denounced them as pointless. "Softball throwing, standing long jump, the 50-Meter dash, the 5 kilometer run, grip strength, side-to-side stepping, upper body strength, and the seated toe touch. Altogether, supposedly they're a comprehensive measure of physical capability. But 70 to 80 percent of students have a quirk that would be applicable to at least one of those tests. Basically, in order to preserve the status quo, people are getting out of schools without any knowledge of what capabilities their bodies really have. It's illogical."

It's also probably cheaper, I thought to myself while looking at the pristinely manicured grounds and expansive athletic field of U.A.. Sure enough, when Bakugo was given the chance to throw an example ball, with an explosion and a shout of 'DIE!' he sent it nearly three quarters of a kilometer away, which would probably have broken a window somewhere across the road from the school I'd just graduated from. And it wasn't like knowing how strong you were without your quirk was completely useless… but I also got his point.

Certainly, my classmates all seemed excited about the chance to cut loose with their quirks. Almost immediately, they started laughing and shouting in excitement over how cool being a hero was. And then… something about Aizawa-sensei changed. His tone of voice dropped to a growl, his slouching posture suddenly got ready for a fight, and his sleepy eyes opened just enough to turn a listless gaze into a ferocious glower. "Let's get this straight. I didn't go out of my way to pull you guys out of orientation just so you all could have fun playing with your quirks. I did it because you all only have three years to get ready to be pros, and for some of you, that won't be long enough. I could bore you with a long speech about how you all need to take this seriously, but instead I'll just say this: the person with the lowest average score across all eight events will be judged a waste of time and _expelled_."

"Wait, seriously? On the first day? Before we've had any chance to train? That's not fair!" There was a generalized murmur of rejection, but the clearest voice I heard in protest was from a round-cheeked girl with brown hair.

"Neither is life. Car accidents… villain attacks… earthquakes… they can all strike at any time, and there's no guarantee that you'll be prepared for those, either," Aizawa said. "If you want to be a hero, you're going to have to learn to handle a little bit of unfairness, because making the unfair more fair is what we do for a living. If you're not ready for that, if you're not ready to spend an obscene amount of hours every day working to be ready for the next attack, the next disaster, then you might as well find that out now instead of wasting your time and ours. This program is for those who are willing to go beyond… Plus Ultra. "

Quietly, I debated just giving up and washing out. How the heck had I wound up in U.A.'s Course for Extremely Motivated Children? Everywhere I looked, people were grinning, stretching out, and otherwise getting ready to work harder than they had to in exchange for the privilege of working even harder than that. Was I really going to go through with this? And then I heard a voice, as if from afar. "Well, guess you're out of luck, then… Last Place-san." I looked over to see Bakugo Katsuki leering at me, and I realized: yes, yes I was. In fact, I was going to score higher than that ass on every. Single. Exam.

For the first exam, Aizawa-sensei had us pair up by seat number and run the 50 meter dash, two at a time. My partner was Yaoyorozu Momo, a fairly serious-looking girl with a big, spiky ponytail; as seats numbered nineteen and twenty, we had time to chat and watch a little bit as everyone else did their sprints ahead of us. "Um, how are you feeling?" Yaoyorozu asked me in a slightly diffident manner. "Are you comfortable in not getting last, at least?"

I snorted. "Like he's actually going to expel us," I said with a roll of my eyes. The first pair of runners to go were Miura Yumiko and Ashido Mina, the blonde bow-user and the all-pink acid sprayer respectively. Ashido was faster, able to use her quirk to let her skate over the surface of the track, while Miura seemed to be able to hold onto her arrows and use them to push her along.

"As expected, I knew I couldn't have been the only person who thought it was a ruse." Yaoyorozu said, sharing a secret smile with me. Next on the track were a froglike girl named Asui Tsuyu and a stiff-looking boy named Tenya Iida, both of whom appeared to have mutation quirks and neither really caught my interest - though Iida in particular seemed like he was quite speedy. "Still, though, are you confident?" Yaoyorozu asked curiously.

With a shrug, I nodded my head. "To be honest, I'm pretty fit. I think I could avoid coming in last even without a quirk at all." The next pair, Hayama and Uraraka, were a study in contrasts. Hayama actually leapt forwards off the starting block, his arms stretched out in front of him, and then he _didn't land_ for the rest of the 50 meters. "Hm. A flight perk?" I said, half unconsciously. Behind him, Uraraka just ran normally, although she appeared to have some sort of power related to things that she touched.

"So it seems," Yaoyorozu said with a nod. "You said your quirk was a… fractional copy quirk? I don't think I've actually heard of one of those before." The next group was a pair of boys named Kaminari Denki and Kirishima Eijiro, one blonde and one red-haired, neither of whom used their quirks for the dash, though both appeared relatively fit. "What happens if you copy my quirk?"

"I find out what it does and get it at 1/108th strength, which… isn't enough to be helpful for most peoples' quirks, but for a few people can come in useful." My eyes narrowed as the girl who saved me during the entrance exam stepped up next to a tall boy with brown-dyed hair. Since Aizawa-sensei was calling us out by name, that meant that I could finally put a name to the pretty face. She was Yukinoshita Yukino, and the boy running with her was Tobe Kakeru. Yukinoshita sped past him at the speed of the super-strong, leaving a trail of snowflakes behind her, leaving him to shout 'go go go go go!' as he struggled to try to keep up.

Yaoyorozu's face lit up. "You can find out what people's quirks are by touching them? That's an incredible tactical advantage! But, how much detail do you get? No, I know! Here, try copying mine!" Wait, seriously? As the next pair of runners, a tall Heteromorph named Shoji Mezo and a girl with long dangling earlobes named Jiro Kyoka got ready to run, I reached out and poked my seat partner in the arm.

A rush of information flooded into my mind. "Feels like… conversion of adipose tissue into… whew, matter of any element, no, any combination of elements, in nearly any shape?" I raised my eyebrow at her. Glancing over at the track, Yuigahama was running with surprising speed, her gym uniform rippling in the wind as she sped past a much taller boy with a crow's head.

I looked back to Yaoyorozu to find her preening a little bit. Everybody liked showing off their quirks, I guess. "I just call it Creation, but yes, that's the gist of it. What about your copy? How does it stack up to the original?" There was a murmur of impressed sounds as Todoroki Shouto, a boy with two-toned hair, skated down the track on a field of ice. Behind him, Hagakure Tohru made normal time - well, it didn't really seem like an invisibility quirk was going to be any good in a physical test. One more reason that his so called expulsion rule was obviously just a hoax.

"Slower. A _lot_ slower. And it feels like something that requires a lot of practice to begin with, because figuring out how to make things is…" I shook my head. As the last pair before us got into position, I watched a little more closely. The kid with green hair was apparently named Midoriya Izuku, and whatever his quirk was it didn't seem designed for running, because he ate Bakugo's dust as his friend exploded his way down the track. So, 4.13 seconds, huh?

"It takes a lot of practice," Yaoyorozu agreed, then she started rolling up her shirt to expose her belly. I blushed and looked away hastily, then looked back in fascination as she started pulling a _motorized scooter_ out of her abdomen. "Shall we?" I nodded and tapped into Ooze. I copied Gigantify, springing up to 5 meters in height, and left the other copy 'slot' blank for now as I got into position at the blocks, crouching down as low as I could go. "Clever," Yaoyorozu said as we got ready. "At that height, you're running the equivalent of a 20-meter race instead of a 50-meter."

"Yeah, at _that_ height," I said, and as the starting whistle blew I immediately plugged the other end of Ooze into Stockpile. While I didn't have nearly as much Gigantify saved up as I had during the entrance exam, I still had enough to instantly take me up to 10 meters tall, and my arms and legs blazed with orange light as I hurtled forward. Sprinting with super-strength is challenging - you need a lot less upward force proportionally to clear your feet off the ground for the next step, so if you run with the same form that a person without super strength would use, you wind up bounding about like you're walking on the moon and spend more time falling than you do pushing yourself forward. The key is to lean so far forward that you think you're about to fall, and then to just hammer your feet backwards as fast as you can, one after another, frantically chasing after your center of gravity to keep it from hitting the ground. It was a tricky maneuver, but thankfully I only had to keep it up for about ten steps.

The high school record for the Quirkless 50m dash was 5.59 seconds. I wasn't quite that fast, but I could usually make it in under six and a half. Of that six and a half seconds, it took me probably about four seconds in the first half to get up to speed, and then in the other two and a half seconds to finish the race. With quirks, it was a different story. At my current height, I was only running the to-scale equivalent of maybe ten meters, and with Stockpile pouring strength into my oversized body, acceleration was _instantaneous_. "Two point two seven seconds!" Aizawa called out, and I grinned. After about another three quarters of a second, my stockpiled Gigantify ran out and my body shrank back to its 'normal' five meter height in mid-air, giving me an extra second or two to get my feet under me and start slowing down.

Turning back, I saw that the class was looking at me with astonishment. "Whoa, dude! That was even faster than Iida-san!" Tobe said, both hands in his long brown hair to exaggerate his astonishment. "Power copying lets you do that?"

His comment broke the silence, and suddenly everyone else started shouting at me at the same time. "Ah! It was just like the time with my dog, except this time you got all big and stuff too!" "Super manly!" "W-wow…" "Not bad, ribbit". It was a scene right out of my junior high dreams - and I had _no idea_ what to do. Ah! This is bad! All of this friendship and praise, I don't know if I can handle it! I'm not cut out to be a riajuu! Quick, focus on something I understand - that's it! Spite! Petty Spite!

I muttered a few thank-yous to everyone who was complimenting me, and then I looked in Bakugo's direction. He was glaring at me, looking like he wished he could explode me with his eyes. I smirked. Ever so slowly, I raised my hand in his direction and raised one finger. No, I didn't flip him off, just raised my index finger, but the effect on him was just about the same as if I had. He scowled, ground his teeth, and set off a couple of explosions in his hands as if he was getting ready to tear me apart. To be honest, it was a little unsettling, so I quickly turned back to everyone who had been congratulating me. Sure, I wasn't used to being praised, but the only way to get used to it is to have it happen more often, right?

"All right, everyone," Aizawa-sensei droned in his dull voice. "That's enough of that. Get moving over to the long jump pit, we don't have all day." Well, there went that idea. As everyone jogged over to the long jump, I made sure to take the time to compliment Yaoyorozu, who had made a very respectable time of just under four seconds with her electric scooter.

"Oi. How long did it take you to figure out how to make an engine with that quirk of yours?" I asked. "And a fully charged battery?"

Yaoyorozu smiled sweetly, happy to be acknowledged for her hard work. "Oh, electric motors are fairly structurally simple. Batteries are a bit trickier, but all you have to do is zero-inflate the hypergraviflax particulate with a slithy tove-like structure and caraloo the vindahable." She said, or something like that anyways - it _sounded_ like Japanese, but I couldn't understand a word of it. Curse you, my terrible science grades!

"Ah, I see," I lied. "Ah, so what are you going to do in the grip test? Giant pliers?"

Yaoyorozu shook her head. "The amount of mechanical advantage I could gain there would be limited by my arm length. I was planning on something like a screw vise with a long turning arm."

"Ah, that would work." I acknowledged cheerfully, having just about understood that one. For my own part, I decided to experiment with one of my newer stockpiled quirks, one that I had copied from a girl who had saved me in the entrance exam, expecting at the time that I would never see her again. Using her own quirk right in front of her felt a little weird, but I had been copying other peoples' quirks without their permission for fifteen years now and didn't really intend to stop so if people were going to get all weird about it then it was better to rip the adhesive bandage off sooner rather than later. Also, I didn't really have any better options - Death Arms was a good overall strength enhancer, but it couldn't focus all of its strength down to one point the way that Yukinoshita's Yuki-Onna quirk could. In any case, I only had about a 10x charge built up for her quirk, so although the temperature around me dropped as I squeezed, it wasn't enough to cause snowflakes to condense or anything like that. It was more than enough to surpass the blonde idiot who tried to explode the hand grip machine, though, and I flashed him a V-for-victory, or maybe just the number 2, as we moved on to the long jump.

This was an event that I didn't have quite as much confidence in - nothing I had copied seemed particularly well suited. That just meant that I would have to find someone to copy. As the first few people tried their best in the long jump, I took note of their different strategies; Miura shot arrows at the ground repeatedly to stay aloft, Ashido was stuck jumping ordinarily, Asui and Iida just ran and jumped for it, and Hayama and Uraraka just flew or floated over the sand pit respectively. Surprisingly, after he finished, Hayama came over in my direction.

"Hey, Hikigaya," he called out with a smile.

My eyebrow twitched. Darn riajuu, stop calling other people's names so casually when you've just met! That, or teach me how to do it! "Yeah? What's up, Hayama? You need something?"

"No, no," he said with a smile. "I was just coming over to ask if you wanted to copy my quirk for the long jump."

Whoa, seriously? Almost despite myself, my hand started reaching out towards his arm. "You sure?" I asked, halting halfway. "This is sort of a competition."

Hayama's easy-going, friendly expression never wavered. "I'm not too worried about last place," he said with a shrug, "And heroes help each other out, don't they? Besides, if we're here to learn what our quirks can really do, then I think you deserve to be able to use your quirk to its fullest potential."

Despite myself, I was moved. Even though I would probably have copied his quirk without permission if he hadn't given it, even though he was probably the sort of person who was nice to everybody, even though he was probably only seeking me out specifically because Yuigahama had given him a mistaken impression of me, the fact that he was being nice to me… was pleasant. "Then, thanks, I guess." I finished my aborted motion and touched Hayama's arm, ditching an underwhelming wall-climbing quirk for his flight. "So… you get faster and physically tougher the longer you fly straight, but you have to slow down to turn?" I asked, settling the details of his quirk as best as I could in my head before I had to use it.

Hayama nodded with yet another smile. You'd think it'd look creepy for a facial expression to constantly stay the same, but he seemed to have a whole collection of wholesome smiles that he could switch between to reduce the unnaturalness of it all. "Yep, that's pretty much it. I call it Falcon Flight."

"Well, my fractional copy's going to look more like Dodo Flight, but thanks," I snarked. "I'm sure it'll be helpful."

Hayama laughed and gave me a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Good luck. Better get over there, it's almost your turn."

Sure enough, Bakugo was exploding his way through the air, flying up and over the three meters-long sandpit and a little bit past. So, that was where I had to beat. Looked like four, maybe four and a half meters? Idly, I tested my copy of Falcon Flight, jumping in place a couple of times. As I expected, it didn't generate enough lift for me to be able to take off with it - the best I would be able to do with it would be maybe a shallow glide. Still, it'd probably be enough.

Once again, Midoriya chose to skip using his quirk for the test, achieving a pretty mediocre result. If Aizawa's threat of expulsion had been real, I would have worried for him, but presumably there were other events he could compete in. And then it was my turn. To be honest, I probably could have cleared the three meter pit without Hayama's perk, but Dodo Flight - no, it was a little bit more useful than that. Vulture Glide? Vulture Glide added in enough lift that I could soar comfortably past Bakugo's marker, grinning as I did. I flashed him a the number three as I landed, enjoying the view of his scowl getting deeper and deeper.

The side step test was a little trickier, since it involved making precise, 30cm jumps while rapidly changing directions. Stockpile was too strong to use in this situation - it would just send me careening all over the place. I sighed. Despite how proud I was of my versatility and my supposed ability to have a quirk for every problem, I was still sort of a one-trick pony at the moment. Fortunately and also unfortunately, nobody else in the class seemed to have a particularly applicable quirk for the event either. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn't copy the perfect quirk for the situation off of anyone; fortunately, Bakugo's attempts at exploding himself from side to side were too imprecise to be of much help to him. The best two performers were probably Tobe and Yukinoshita. Tobe's quirk seemed to involve him talking, because he kept shouting "bounce bounce bounce bounce" as he moved from side to side - not my style, though I was sure I would pick his quirk up later. I far preferred Yukinoshita's quirk, which since it seemed to be more of a 'channel heat energy into directional force' quirk than a 'convert heat energy into muscular strength' quirk meant that it was actually pretty easily to control precisely. (There was also Tohru, who took her clothes off and just moved her shoes from line to line with her hands, but if I tried that trick I'd be arrested for public indecency.)

However, my best bet for this exam would be copying Todoroki. He had created a pair of short walls of ice to stop his feet from going over the lines on the side; since I had seen him create much larger ice structures nigh-instantaneously, it was a fair bet that I would be able to create little ones like that as well, though possibly not as quickly. Thinking that, I jogged over to him just as he finished. "Hey, Todoroki-san." I called out to him. "Mind letting me copy your quirk for this one?"

"Yes, I do mind." Todoroki said. "Actually, I'd prefer that you didn't copy my quirk at all. Ever."

"A-ah," I said, not really sure how to respond. "I… see?"

"You can copy my quirk, Hikki!" Suddenly I was surprised by a smiling Yuigahama popping up into my personal space. Oi, when did I start having a nickname? "I don't mind at all!" She stretched out her hand towards me, and for lack of a better response to being put on the spot I reached out and tapped her on the back of the hand. Hmm, super-strong telekinesis well suited to fibrous materials, but only within a few centimeters of her skin? That explains the hug, I guess, if she needed her body to be in contact with my shirt in order to fix it. As I withdrew my fingers from the back of Yuigahama's hand, for some reason she looked a little bit - annoyed? Disappointed? I really couldn't tell. Had she wanted to hold my hand? Nah, couldn't be - she must just be irritated about Todoroki or something.

"Uh, thanks Yuigahama, this'll be helpful." I wasn't really sure how yet, but I'd figure something out. Maybe with a Stockpile for one-time armor plating?

"I-" Todoroki called out abortively, seemingly frustrated. "No offense meant, Hikigaya-san. It's just - it's a personal matter, that's all."

I nodded in acquiescence, and started heading over towards Aizawa-sensei, because by now I was out of time. I couldn't set up the ice walls like I wanted, so instead I just used Yukinoshita's quirk together with my Hot Skin quirk to give it a little bit of extra ambient heat to suck out of the air. Despite not being my ideal scenario, though, it was still enough for me to flash four fingers at an increasingly irate-looking Bakugo.

During the Ball Throw, the standout was obviously Uraraka, who was much nicer about letting me copy her quirk than Todoroki had been. Although she called it Zero Gravity, it didn't quite nullify gravity precisely, it just made objects float. The precise mechanism of how it worked was a little strange to me - if I understood as much science as Yaoyorozu then I might have been able to explain it - but the upshot was that where Uraraka could float up to three tons, I could handle a max of three hundred kilos, and where Uraraka could make things actually float, I could make them about 10-15% lighter. Before I could see how useful that would actually be, though, there was another big surprise: Midoriya.

I watched along in fascination, as did almost everyone else in the class, as the green-haired shrimp got cussed out by Aizawa-sensei for using his quirk in a dangerous manner, recognized Aizawa as the Pro Hero Eraserhead, and then finally used his quirk for real, breaking his finger - and the sound barrier. While shouting SMASH.

A sudden inkling of suspicion dawned on me, so after Bakugo finished yelling at his friend for holding out on him (it seemed like they had a weird relationship, but I didn't have any friends to use as a basis of comparison, so who was I to judge?) I gave Midoriya a complimentary pat on the shoulder as I went up to take my place in the circle for the ball toss. I patted him on his gym uniform, so if he accused me of copying his quirk I could point out that I didn't touch his skin. I don't actually need to touch bare skin to copy quirks, but my quirk paperwork said I did, and acting like skin contact was needed had saved me a lot of trouble in junior high, so at least it would be a _familiar_ lie to add to all the other ones I was living.

As I expected, as soon as I touched him my Quirk recognized his as a quirk that I already had, no need to copy it. Midoriya Izuku had Stockpile. The real question was, how did he get it? Stockpile could be passed down deliberately by giving someone a piece of your DNA. Was he an apprentice? But if so, why would All Might choose someone too frail to use his power, without any propensity for heroics? All Might was famously silent on any potential romantic entanglements he might have - was he All Might's lover? His Cata-Might? X-rated images suggesting just how that DNA could have been transferred filled my mind's eye. Blergh, I needed brain bleach! Quick, think of something pure and innocent! Why is nothing coming to miiind!

"Oi, Hikigaya. You're wasting time." Aizawa called out. It jolted me out of my brain freeze and I shook my head, thankful for the distraction. Focusing on the ball, I channeled Uraraka's Zero Gravity quirk into it, wound up, and threw the ball as hard as my miniscule piece of Stockpile could send it. I didn't quite crack the sound barrier like Midoriya had, but it probably wasn't that far off, and with Uraraka's Float active I still managed to eke out a win over his throw - and, by extension, Bakugo's. I tried to catch his attention so that I could show him the number five, but all of his attention was on Midoriya.

Honestly, so was mine. Listening to everyone else's chatter around me, Uraraka and Iida were describing how they had seen Midoriya wreck the Zero-Pointer, his arm, and both of his legs all in one punch. But that had been during the entrance exam, and I was pretty sure that All Might had been on the news fighting villains at least few times between then and now, so he obviously _still had_ his quirk. Maybe if it was possible to pass on Stockpile intentionally through DNA, it was also possible to pass it down _unintentionally_? As in... at birth?

I looked at Midoriya's green hair, considered All Might's yellow hair, and wondered if Midoriya's mother's hair was blue. It would explain a lot of things - why Midoriya had evidently kept his quirk secret as a kid, even from his best friend, why All Might was suddenly staying in Musutafu year-round and teaching at U.A. - All Might had enemies, the kind of villains who would hurt a child if they couldn't hurt him, so he'd kept his family hidden and his child safe until… hmm. Maybe the Tatooin incident? When his kid got hurt despite everything, and didn't know how to Smash his way out of trouble? The timeline… sort of fit.

The upper body test (a combination of pushups and pull-ups), the distance run, the seated toe-touch, and the sit-ups all passed in the blink of an eye as I ruminated over the idea that my classmate might be All Might's potential secret love child. For each one, I distractedly used the most appropriate quirks for the event - mostly Stockpile plus something else that was useful, except for the toe-touch where I used a combination of a leg-shrinking quirk and an arm-stretching quirk. So in the end, I was as surprised as anyone else when I wound up coming in first, with my seat partner Yaoyorozu just behind me.

I was much less surprised about the 'expulsion' thing being a lie. For one, Yaoyorozu and I had already discussed it; for another, Midoriya was in last place and there was no way that U.A. was going to kick out All Might's love child without a really, _really_ good reason. As Aizawa-sensei - Eraserhead - walked off, leaving us some vague instructions to get our necessary papers back at our desks, I turned towards my 'partner'. "As we expected, huh, Yaoyorozu?"

"Honestly, it wasn't _that_ hard to figure out." She agreed. "By the way, congratulations on your first place result!"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "There were a lot of different events, and we only had to do them each once. It played well to my skill set, that's all."

Yaoyorozu shook her head. "That's part of it, but you're also exceptionally fit. I could tell you were using some sort of physical boosting quirk, but at a fractional strength some of that has to be coming from just you, right?"

"Yeah, but I cheat." I said bluntly. It was true, though the way I was about to explain it wasn't "With muscle-building quirks, regeneration quirks, and a few really good heteromorphic quirks, you could get this strong in ten months too."

"Ten months?" Bakugo shouted. "I knew I fucking remembered you from somewhere. The other guy who got grabbed by that ooze fucker, that was you!"

"Yup." I said, looking between him and Midoriya, who had a similar look of astonishment on his face. "Long time no see." The rest of the class, who had already been half-listening in as I talked to Yaoyorozu for some reason, were now openly staring in interest at this particular bit of drama.

Bakugo snarled at my nonchalance. "Why the fuck didn't you pull out those moves when we were being attacked by a villain? Or during the entrance exam? Is everybody around here _that_ fucking addicted to sandbagging this shit?" Behind him, Midoriya flinched.

I shrugged, doing my best to keep on a calm front, though the conversation was veering close to areas I didn't really feel like going. "Hadn't copied most of those quirks yet back then, and during the entrance exam there was this whole 'broken leg' thing I had going on." Predictably, Yuigahama looked guilty as I brought the topic up yet again.

"Hmph." Bakugo replied, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Whatever." With that, he turned his back on me. "I got your point, Hikigaya. Nine for nine. Watch your back, because this is the last time I'm ever letting you or anyone else get first place."

"Ah. Got it." By this point, I was being deliberately nonchalant just to get his goat. It was probably going to backfire on me horribly later, but eh. In the moment, I couldn't be bothered.

As he left, Midoriya came up to me, still clutching his hand and trying not to move his broken finger. "U-um, s-sorry I didn't recognize you, H-Hikigaya-san! U-um, g-glad to see you're doing well I'm sorry I don't really know what to say or anything but you obviously decided to be a hero after that and you did and that's sort of amazing and you were pretty impressive and actually I think you got a lot taller and all the muscle like you said so that might be part of it too."

Halfway through his sentence, Midoriya's speech devolved into this kind of creepy mumble, but I managed to get the gist of it. "Yeah. Um. Don't worry about it, I have kind of a forgettable face. It's... uh, good to see you here too," I finished awkwardly. God, why was I so bad at small talk! "Hey, uh, your quirk."

He froze like a deer in the headlights, as if he was paranoid that I was going to ask him the wrong sort of question, and I understood _exactly_ how he felt. "I've pushed strength quirks too far before too," I told him, leaving out the small detail that it had actually been the exact same quirk. "Most of the damage with mine didn't happen until I actually moved with it on and put stress on my limbs with it. Once you get all fixed up, maybe try lying down in a super relaxed posture and turning it on from there, let your body get used to it slowly, then start with trying to move slowly and carefully while it's on. Speed up gradually, you know?"

Midoriya's face lit up in a brilliant smile. "That might work! I'll try it! Thank you, Hikigaya-san!" Man, with a smile that big, I could actually see the All Might resemblance a little bit. God, this was awkward.

"Good luck, Midoriya-san." I said with a wave. "See you tomorrow." And with that, I headed back to the classroom to get the books and papers Aizawa-sensei had mentioned while Midoriya split off to see the nurse. As I walked back into the classroom, a few people smiled and gave me friendly nods, while others looked at me enviously or with rivalry-filled glares. Using skills acquired over long years of avoiding being bullied, I managed to get my stuff together and get back out of the classroom before anybody could really talk to me. Which was good, because I was exhausted.

My first day of Hero School had been freaking _weird_.


	6. Really, It's The Support Company's Fault

**A/N: Here's a giant-sized update for you all to make up for the fact that I probably won't be able to write much for a day or two. Haven't checked it thoroughly yet, so let me know if you spot any errors!**

"Onii~chan, onii~chan!" As I walked in the door, tired from a long day of physical exams and a long bike ride home, my little sister Komachi came bounding up to me as full of energy as always. Seriously, though, it's like she's got a nuclear power plant in her belly.

I reached down and tousled her hair. "You only need to say it once, you know. Or do you want me calling you 'imouto-chan, imouto-chan' right back?" I said in my gooiest, most saccharine voice.

Komachi shuddered exaggeratedly. "Bleugh. No! You can't! Too creepy!"

I laughed and flopped down on the couch, letting my body sink contentedly into the cushions. "Oi, bring me a MAX Coffee while you're up, would you?"

"Lazy!" Komachi scolded, but then she went ahead and grabbed it for me anyways. "So? So? How was your first day at hero school?"

"Eh, it was fine," I said, taking the can from her with a nod of thanks and gratefully drinking about a third of it all at once. I smirked. "How was your first day of middle school?"

"Grrrr!" Komachi growled, stamping her foot in exasperation and only rattling the floorboards a little. "Onii-chan! No changing the subject! 'It was fine' is not enough information! Did you get to meet any pro heroes? Did you get to meet All Might? What's hero school like? Telllll meeeee!"

"All right, all right already." Heh. Too easy. "Let's see… well, first off, the only pro hero I got to meet was my homeroom teacher." I took another sip of coffee to try and drag things out. "Apparently we were supposed to meet the rest of the faculty today too and listen to a speech by the principal and stuff, but our teacher didn't want to, so he had us do track and field exercises instead."

"Eeehh?! He can just do that?" Komachi asked, her eyes wide in astonishment. Now that I was telling her about it properly, she took a seat on the couch next to me, her legs tucked up tight in a seiza-like position so that she could get a little extra height to look me in the eyes.

I shrugged. "Apparently pro heroes get to do whatever they like at U.A.. He even showed up to class still in a sleeping bag!"

"EEHHH?!" Komachi shouted, and I put one hand over my ear to ward off the noise. "What kind of weirdo is he?"

"Pro Hero Eraserhead, apparently," I said. "He's got some sort of quirk-nullification power, I guess? I dunno, I was going to look him up more later. He's less of a weirdo when he actually teaches, at least."

"Well _that's_ a relief," Komachi said sarcastically. I'm pretty sure she learned that from me! No longer quite as excited as before, she sat back a bit, letting her feet come out from underneath her and relaxing a bit into the couch. "What about your classmates? Did you make any friends? Oh! Are there any cute girls?"

"Hmm…" I looked up towards the ceiling in thought as a few images flashed in front of my mind's eye. The trim, flawless skin of Yaoyorozu's belly. Yuigahama, happily stretching her hand out to me to share her quirk with me. Yukinoshita, cool and aloof, her long hair fluttering behind her as snowflakes fell all around her. Asui, bending over on the starting block, her muscular legs filling out the gym uniform. Hagakure's sweaty T-shirt clinging to her invisible skin as she got undressed to use her quirk. Miura's ringlets, falling to the side as she tilted her head. Mina's -

"Oi, onii-chan, if you keep making creepy faces like that you'll never be popular, you know," Komachi said with a flat voice as she rudely disturbed me from my reverie. "Honestly…"

"Ahem, hem, hem." I coughed, a little red in the face. "No, no, I was just thinking!"

"Uh huh." Komachi said dryly. "I'll bet."

"Not about that!" I lied, "I was just trying to figure out if a few people counted as friends or not! Both of the guys who were with me in the Villain incident, _and_ the girl whose dog I saved, are all in my class! It's weird!"

"That _is_ weird!" Komachi said, sitting up straighter. "And? Are they all nice?"

I snorted derisively at the thought. "One of the guys is a jerk. The other two..." are All Might's secret lovechild, and a girl who keeps accidentally giving me the wrong impression, "well, the other two seem pretty okay. What about you? How was your first day, for real this time?"

"Oh! Well my teacher is Mr. Sagimura, and he remembers you, and he said he was happy that it didn't seem like I would be quite as much trouble, but then he remembered that you got into U.A. so he kind of backtracked a little bit and said he was happy you had grown up a bit since, so that was kind of funny, and my friend Kairi, you remember Kairi? She's in my class this year which is great because I was afraid I wouldn't know anybody since there's so many elementary schools that everybody comes from and also I met Ami and she's really nice and has kind of a computer quirk, which is like whoa, super useful, and then we went to the assembly and the student council president gave a speech and she seemed like a pretty cool like onee-san type you know and I think I might try to be on the student council this year and after that we had to…" I just sat back and relaxed, letting Komachi's chattering fill the silent house for a while. Every once in a while I made 'uh huh' or 'mmm' sounds to let her know I was still listening, but when Komachi really gets going, it can be tough to get a word in edgewise.

I was tired. My legs ached. My parents had volunteered to pay for an apartment closer to U.A., but I turned them down; I was already feeling a little guilty at how much later I was going to be getting home in the afternoons now that I was in the Hero Course, which mandatorily took up not just a normal slate of afternoon courses but all of the time that students would normally have for after-school clubs as well. If I had left Komachi all alone in this too-big house I don't know if she would have forgiven me. As it was, I was just lucky that she was finally in Junior High and could find clubs to keep her busy, so I'd only really be leaving her alone for the duration of my bike ride home. At a natural pause in the conversation slash monologue, I cleared my throat. "Hey, do we have ingredients for curry?"

"Ah! Yes yes yes! You're the best onii-san ever! If we don't I'll get them from the store!" Such is life when you have a little sister with quirk-enhanced senses and a copied Bloodhound Nose transformation quirk that lets you almost keep up with her - every so often you have to cook something that hits her enhanced palate _just_ right.

Who knew when I'd have even this much time and energy again?

Dinner came and went. We cleaned up and did the dishes together, then spent about an hour or so watching some lame comedy show on television. Our parents got home, just soon enough to ask us about our days for ten minutes and then wish us goodnight as we headed off to bed. And then I started Stockpiling quirks.

With my legs folded underneath me in a lotus position on my bed, my hands on my knees, I brought up my Ooze quirk. With one end, I touched Gigantism, with the other I copied Stockpile, and then I _focused very hard_ on not using either of them! It helped that I was inside - Gigantism couldn't activate if there wasn't enough empty space around me, so it was a little easier to focus on putting energy _in_ to the stockpile instead of taking it _out_. Ever so slowly, I could feel the sensation of energy being stored, of Gigantism storing growth quirkiness into Ooze while Stockpile kept creating more and more space in Ooze for Gigantism to fill. Once I stopped copying either Gigantism or Stockpile, the growth quirk in Ooze would be trapped, unable to escape until the specific combination of quirks was copied again, allowing all of the stored energy to escape into my body and allowing me to deplete the 'stockpiled' quirk.

But storing that quirk in the first place was an exercise in tedium. I couldn't watch TV, read, or do anything physical but sit there with my legs crossed. Even my posture had to be calculated - if I slipped and channeled the strength portion of Stockpile for a second, my feet were trapped under my legs so it was more likely that I would tip myself over instead of sending myself flying into the ceiling. I used to do it lying supine, but it was such a freaking boring process that I tended to fall asleep if I was any way at all comfortable, so instead I was doing warrior monk nonsense out of some terrible anime. I mean, the only reason to show someone meditating is to save budget frames on animation! It's literally just sitting! Dammit, I need to get better at this before my life is reduced to static image shots rendered over a mediocre soundtrack! At least let me get it routine enough that I can read or watch TV or something, please!

It didn't help that the process was so _slow_. It took about an hour to save up a 10% charge in a quirk. Getting from 10% to 20% took an extra two hours, 20% to 30% took an additional three, 30% to 40% took an additional five, and so on. It was like the more power I saved, the more power was required to create additional storage space and the less was available to fill it. I hadn't found a limit, yet, and I had confirmed that it was possible to go over 100%, but for practical purposes it was a lot more efficient to charge a lot of quirks up to 10% than it was to charge one up to 20 or 25%. I managed to get Gigantism, Yuki-Onna, Float, and Death Arms all to 10% before I was finally too tired to continue.

So after biking 20 km to school, enduring a fitness test, enduring a whole host of uncomfortable revelations, biking home, cooking dinner, and practicing with my quirks for a few hours, I finally fell asleep at around one in the morning. With great relief, I finally switched to pulling from Stockpile instead of storing into it and activated Deep Sleep: Stockpile Version.

And then at roughly five a.m., I woke up, spent an hour or so meditating to fill Deep Sleep back up to 10%, and then actually got up to start my day. Thank God and/or Buddha for… what was her name? Nanisaki-san? For whoever, because otherwise I had no idea how I would keep up with all of this pro-hero nonsense.

Inwardly, I prayed that today would be a less trying day than the day before.

It wasn't.

The morning was calm enough; it was just a mix of normal classes (albeit classes taught by bizarrely famous people), but in the afternoon All Might himself "Came Through The Door… Like A Normal Person!" … Or so he said, anyways. Personally, when I walked through doors I didn't make it an entrance-worthy production, but maybe that was just me. Still, despite the anxiety and guilt I felt over copying his quirk, even I felt a surge of wonder and excitement as All Might marched to the front of the room. Even though I knew that heroes' public reputations were often carefully massaged and managed by teams of professionals, even though I suspected that he was only at U.A. to take care of his illegitimate child, All Might was an undeniable presence. These days, All Might was just another fact of life, like the weather; you generally assumed he was happening to someone somewhere, and only his biggest dust-ups were worthy of more than an outside mention. When we were growing up? In the bad old days, when we had monthly evacuation drills in our kindergarten classes, and our parents tried really hard to avoid letting us watch the news? Well, there was a reason that he was called the Symbol Of Peace, because before his debut, today's current peace hadn't _existed_.

He was a man who had forged an era with his two fists, and he was going to teach us how to be heroes.

I wonder if I should send Midoriya's mom a gift basket.

"No Time To Dally," All Might proclaimed. "Today's activity is this! Battle Training!" And with that, he held out… some kind of card? With the word 'BATTLE' on it? In case one of us couldn't hear his booming voice? Were all pro-heroes this weird? "And for that, you need these!" With a beep, All Might pressed a remote. One after another, high-tech storage lockers started sliding out of the classroom walls, because why waste time walking to a gym locker when you could build everything into the actual classroom? "In accordance with the 'quirk registry' and the special request forms you filled out before being admitted," All Might continued, the sound of the storage lockers coming to a stop one after another punctuating his speech, "These Are... Your Hero Costumes!"

Ergh. Receiving the Hero Costume Request paperwork had brought up a lot of old, dark memories that I would have preferred never to have seen the light of day. Memories of… cosplay. Deeply, deeply embarrassing cosplay. The Wizard Hero who could reduce all villains to ash with a single wave of his wand, Dark Magician! (Actually just me in my dad's too-large-for-me coat, holding a plastic toy.) The Samurai Hero who could cleave his enemies in twain without letting a speck of blood dirty his robes, Samurai-Man! (Actually just me in a festival yukata with a scarf wrapped around my face, holding a broomstick.) The Muscle Hero, master of 108 different fighting styles, any of which could cave in an opponent's chest with a single blow, GUTS! (Actually just me with my shirt off and lines and numbers drawn on my chest, making embarrassing poses into a mirror.) How old was I when I performed these cosplays, you ask? For the sake of the tattered remains of my dignity, that question will remain unanswered.

Needless to say, all of my old cosplay ideas were totally useless for hero costume ideas. And as my sister frequently enjoyed pointing out, I had no fashion sense, so in the end I just decided to list my practical requirements and let the support company decide. It couldn't be too loose, because Mt. Lady's quirk was a core element of my combat style and anything too far away from my skin would just get shredded. It couldn't constrict my hands or forearms, because it would get in the way of transforming my hands into water cannons with stockpiled Backdraft. I needed sturdy and shock-absorbing shoes, if possible, since I spent so much time with super strength, and ideally some way of carrying items with me, if they could figure out a way to do it that wouldn't get ripped up if I changed size. Other than that, I had left it blank, so in short? I had no idea what my costume was going to look like until I changed into it.

The changing rooms themselves were adjoining the classroom, something that would be a massive waste of space compared to having a communal locker room in a normal school, but which here allowed us to 'deploy quickly', or at least to not waste time going all the way down to the gym to get changed. This also meant that we had to walk through the halls in our hero costumes in order to get anywhere, so I deeply hoped that my costume wasn't too embarrassing. Crossing my fingers, I opened my package from the support company… and was pleasantly surprised.

The core of the costume was a black bodysuit that reached to my elbows and my knees; as requested, my forearms were left bare, while at the knees the bodysuit switched to white in order to create the appearance of boots. Thick white stripes ran up the outside of my legs until hitting a thin grey band around my waist, and then further up the sides of my body the number 108 was printed in large white numerals, tall enough that you could just see the tops of the numerals from my front and the bottoms of the numerals from my back. The 1 was aligned at about mid-chest, the 0 at about the bottom of my ribcage, and the 8 around the middle of my abs, which were visible due to the tightness of the fabric. White lines also ran up from my elbows to a wide grey collar at my shoulders, which continued upwards to cover my mouth and nose almost like I was wearing a grey scarf. Finally, to complete the ensemble, I had a wide, detachable grey cloak, one that would stretch to a shorter cape with a 'normal' Mt. Lady growth, to an even shorter mantle if I had to go bigger, and would just pop off if I went too big. The attached note from the support company noted that it was heat, cold, and stab resistant, which would help with protecting my body when I was at a normal size, and it included pockets in the inner lining to help me carry support tools since I couldn't wear a belt.

It all looked really good, but there was just one problem. As I picked up the cape, an envelope fell to the floor, spilling out a trio of chillingly familiar pictures. With a trembling hand, I reached down, picking up the pictures and examining the message that had been included with them. "We received a letter from your parents saying that you had forgotten to include these pictures into the sealed envelope, so they helpfully included them in a separate letter. Please thank them for us, but we prefer that candidates send materials on the proper forms in order to facilitate information storage, and we would hate to deprive anyone of original family photos."

My eyebrow twitched. Why hadn't I put those away? My cheeks a furious red, I yanked up my scarf-like facemask and looked around the room in a panic, hoping against hope that nobody had noticed the pictures. Most of my classmates were busy getting their own hero gear on, but at the locker next to me stood the six-armed Shoji Mezo, his hands temporarily shapeshifted into eyes in order to see what everyone's costumes looked like. One of his hand-eyes melted like wax and shifted into a hand-mouth, which curved upwards at the ends like it was trying to suppress a laugh. "Don't worry, Hikigaya-san," it whispered. "We were all kids once, I understand."

"A-ah." I stammered in mortification, and I shoved the pictures into one of the 'magician's pockets' on the inner lining of my cape. "See you down there," I said, and I rushed out of the room before my cheeks could spontaneously combust. Look on bright side, I said to myself. Maybe there'd be a deadly accident in battle training, and my opponent would put me out of my misery.

The walk to Training Ground Beta wasn't a long one, and as I passed through the hallways I realized that they looked a little familiar. Sure enough, All Might had sent us to one of the ruined cityscapes used for the Entrance Exams. The majority of Class 1-A was already there, everyone chatting with each other and checking out each other's costumes. The guys' costumes ranged from the elaborate, like Iida Tenya's knightly armor or Tobe Kakeru's 'walking weapons rack', to the simple, like Kaminari Denki's near-street clothes or Hayama Hayato's leather bomber jacket, yellow scarf, and brown aviator helmet, but didn't have much in the way of unifying themes or features. On the distaff side, the girls seemed to have a bit more in common with each other. Roughly a third of the girls had chosen a bodysuit - Uraraka, Asui, and Yuigahama were wearing skintight outfits in pink astronaut, green frogman, and cherry-red motorcycle gear varieties respectively. Another third were wearing something evocative of an era - Ashido was bringing disco back with a tie-dye leotard, Yukinoshita wore a pale blue kimono with a slightly darker blue obi that was straight out of the Edo era, and Miura had a stylized take on a hunter from Medieval Europe with a green forester outfit under an orange cloak. The rest just chose something that worked well with their quirk and had organized their costumes around it; Jiro with her speaker boots, Yaoyorozu with a copious amount of bare skin, and Hagakure without any clothing at all.

"Yahello, Hikki!" Yuigahama called out to me with an enthusiastic wave. "Your costume looks great! Did you design it?"

Sort of, but I'd rather not mention that ever again. "Ah, well, it was mostly the support company." I said, scratching at my cheek underneath the facemask. "Yours is," a little tight around your chest, "very distinctive. Is it what you were hoping for?"

"Mmm-hmm!" Her helmet had a clear faceplate in the front, making it easy to see her wide smile. "If I wanted to use my quirk to protect my head, I'd have to cut my hair super short to make sure the fabric would be close enough to my skin, so I decided on a helmet instead. And since my quirk works best the closer the fabric is to me, that meant that the safest I could be was to go skin-tight for the bodysuit. All I had to do for the rest was pick a theme. " Up close, I could see that her chest was emblazoned with a crossed needle design, the center of the X emphasizing her endowments, while spools on her hips and on her shoulders carried long reams of high-strength thread. There was something interesting about her white boots and gloves, too - her calves and forearms looked like they were covered with tightly wrapped bandages rather than solid fabric.

"Do you sew a lot?" I asked Yuigahama out of curiosity.

Shamefacedly, she put a hand behind her head. "Eh heh heh not really actually, I just cheat and make the fabric do things with my quirk, but if you count that as sewing then yeah I guess I sort of do a bit."

As we chatted, the stragglers slowly settled in. Last to arrive was Midoriya, who was wearing a pretty goofy-looking homemade rabbit outfit. He made a beeline towards me, seemingly excited about something, but before he could talk to me he got interrupted by Uraraka, and then All Might started the lesson. "Alright, since we're all here, let's get started!"

"Sensei, this appears to be the cityscape area we used for the entrance exam. Are we going to be performing urban maneuvers?" Iida's voice sounded a little tinny coming from inside the helmet he was wearing, yet somehow that pompousness of his carried through just fine.

All Might shook his head slowly. "No, today we're moving on to step two. Indoor Anti-Personnel Battle Training! While statistically, you're more likely to encounter a Villain outdoors, the most dastardly, heinous villains are most often found indoors. Often they're under house arrest, or were incarcerated and are trying to break free; those that go unnoticed by heroes for some time frequently have places of illicit business away from prying eyes, or lairs that they've fortified against discovery and invasion. Make no mistake! Fighting villains indoors is dangerous, but sometimes you have no choice!" Ergh. Again, a reminder that we were all theoretically preparing to risk our lives for a living. Thankfully, my mask hid any faces of disgust that I might have made. "And now, you will be split into Villain teams and Hero teams, and you'll face off in two-on-two indoor battles!"

People asked all sorts of questions - why are we doing this without training, how do we win, how do we split up - but I barely heard any of them, or any of the answers. I was too busy thinking 'Please not with Bakugo, please not against Bakugo, please no Bakugo, please no Bakugo…' to myself to pay attention.

When the teams were chosen by lots and I wound up on team J with Kirishima, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Awright, man, I'm getting pumped up!" he shouted as he walked over to me. How do you even respond to someone like that? Should I try and be energetic back at him? Say something? Without any better ideas, I just gave him a silent nod, which he seemed to take well. "You too, huh? Man, this is gonna be sweet!" There. Nailed it. Now all I had to worry about was who we were going to be fighting.

Team A didn't seem too bad; if Uraraka floated me I would probably still be able to fly myself into a wall or something that I could push off of, and Midoriya seemed like too much of a nice kid to want to splatter me all over every flat surface with that monster strength of his, so he was probably safe to fight too. Team B had Todoroki and Mezo, one of whom was paranoid about me copying his quirk and the other of whom knew about my dark past. No thanks, if I could avoid it. Tobe and Yaoyorozu were together on team C, and I wished whoever got that nightmarish combination as their enemies good freaking luck. Bakugo, who I most wanted to avoid, was in D with Iida - they'd be another tough team to fight. Ashido and Miura in E could put together a pretty nasty combo too, with one acting as area defense and the other able to attack from behind it; hopefully if Kirishima and I went up against them we'd be the Villains, rather than the Heroes.

And so it went. One by one I considered every team, and concluded that I… really didn't want to fight any of them, if at all possible. Yuigahama & Yukinoshita with their combined strength, Kaminari & Jiro with area blasts, Asui & Tokoyami as super-strong and mobile grapplers, Hagakure & Hayama whose maneuverability and unpredictability were top-notch, they all had things about them that would make them really tough teams to face. Really, the only one that looked like an easy fight was Team A.

So naturally, they were the first ones to be eliminated from the pool of our potential opponents. The first battle was Team A vs. Team D, Uraraka and Midoriya as heroes against Iida and Bakugo as villains. The villains were given fifteen minutes of setup time to start, which Iida and Bakugo used to scout out the site and to find a good place for the bomb, while the heroes were given fifteen minutes to talk to each other and strategize. In the command deck, we could see our classmates but not hear them, so we had to hypothesize about what our classmates might do and the strategies they might take without any input from them. With that said, none of us were feeling terribly confident about Team A's chances. Midoriya's unreliable quirk was a huge liability, and as useful as Uraraka's perk seemed to be, she would have trouble against either Bakugo or Iida on their own, let alone both. The general consensus was that Team D would win, and nobody really disagreed.

And then Midoriya countered Bakugo's ambush by throwing him into the ground without even using his quirk, shouted something inaudible to us, and then _started glowing with green sparks_. "Midoriya-shonen!" shouted All Might. "Your quirk is too powerful to be used directly against Bakugo-shonen!" All Might paused for a second as we all saw Midoriya's mouth move on camera. "Very well, then, if it's only five percent, then I'll allow it, but be careful not to strike at vulnerable areas!"

Having to stay up every night Stockpiling quirks was boring, but it gave me a lot of time to think about things. Things like the misdeeds I had committed, the trusts I had betrayed, and all the lies I was going to tell. And there were no lies so effective as the ones that you told unprompted, before anybody had the chance to put you on the spot. "He figured it out," I said, an only half-faked note of surprised satisfaction in my voice. "I wondered if he would."

Predictably, more than a few pairs eyes turned to me, flickering back and forth between me and the scene of Bakugo pushing himself back up to his feet with a wary look in his eyes. The first to say anything was surprisingly Yukinoshita, who I didn't think I had spoken with since that brief moment at the entrance exam. "You sound like you know something, Hikigaya-san. Were you able to give him advice because you copied his quirk yesterday?"

"No," I lied, "I was able to give him advice because I copied his quirk ten months ago, and my quirk told me he was quirkless." On the monitors, Midoriya launched himself towards Bakugo at preposterous speeds, looking like he might perhaps have intended to throw a punch but too uncoordinated with his superpowers to do anything but turn it into a tackle. The two of them flew through midair in a clinch that only ended when Bakugo landed a palm strike into Midoriya's ribs, blasting them apart into opposite walls of the corridor. I wasn't watching the screens, though - I was watching All Might's shoulders, which imperceptibly tensed as I potentially got too close to secrets better off not spoken out loud. "Clearly, I was wrong," I said as All Might opened his mouth, cutting off what I was sure would have been an instruction to keep quiet and focus on the monitors.

"Clearly," said Yukinoshita. Bakugo and Midoriya pulled themselves to their feet, both seemingly battered and bruised from their previous collision. Midoriya had a large burn mark on his chest, while Bakugo's nose was bleeding. "So how does that translate into you being able to help Midoriya-san?"

Midoriya's technique had dropped as his concentration lapsed, but as he frantically scrambled back away from Bakugo he finally managed to get enough distance to buy time to start glowing green again, at which point he reversed course, lunging back towards his friend. "Basically, the only thing I could think of was that - picture Midoriya as a pot of water, and his quirk as the fire on the stove." As they came back into contact, Midoriya started bouncing off of the walls and ceiling to avoid Bakugo's explosive blasts, while Bakugo used his explosions to create smokescreens and maneuver out of the way of Midoriya's straight-line charges. "From room temperature to ninety-nine degrees, the water is just water, and doesn't do anything special. Then all of a sudden, the water boils, the pot lid starts rattling, water splashes all over the stove. Midoriya breaks some bones." It was, I knew, an explanation that was completely wrong in every detail. But All Might was known to have an 'uncopyable' quirk, and if I said that my opinion of his son's quirk was that it was copyable-but-useless, then my bet was that he would probably be content to let that mistaken impression lie. "I figured I just got the impression that he was quirkless because I was trying to boil a pot of water with a match."

Sure enough, All Might stayed quiet, focused on the fight between Midoriya and Bakugo. Finally, the aggressive blonde made a mistake, repeating the same right haymaker that had gotten him tossed on his back at the start of the fight. This time, rather than grabbing him for a throw, Midoriya dodged and let Bakugo stick his arm through a strip of capture tape, and then using the super-speed and strength that Stockpile granted, managed to get it looped around the rest of Bakugo's body before he could react. "THE VILLAIN IS CAPTURED!" shouted All Might into the microphone, apparently not concerned about potentially revealing tactical information to Iida or Uraraka. "Stand down, Bakugo-shonen!"

Bakugo snarled up at the camera, struggling slightly against the tape, before finally sitting down in the corridor in a slump. On camera, we could see Midoriya pause to say a few words to Bakugo, though of course none of us could hear what they were, before finally limping off down the hallway, heading for the top of the building where Uraraka had apparently managed to locate the bomb. Next to me, Kirishima let out a low whistle. "Damn, Hikigaya-kun! What kind of advice did you give Midoriya? He took out Bakugo just like that! And do you have any advice like that for me?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I said, faking nonchalance. "If you're boiling water and the lid is rattling… all you need to do is crack the lid just a little to let the pressure off. Say… five percent, right All Might-sensei?"

"Ah Hah Hah!" All Might laughed, seemingly very pleased with the whole situation. "I don't believe that even Midoriya-shonen knows how his own quirk works yet, but that's certainly a very interesting analysis, Hikigaya-shonen! Regardless, whatever you said to him certainly seems to have helped!"

I suppose I should have felt proud at myself for successfully deceiving All Might yet again, for coming up with a plausible explanation for Midoriya's quirk, but mostly I just felt sick to my stomach. Well, as much as I owed to All Might for saving my life and for the benefits his stolen quirk bought me, the least I could do was to help him cover for his illegitimate son. Suddenly, I noticed everyone else standing around looking at me in admiration and envy, and the feeling of wrongness doubled. I needed to do something, to make it so that the conversation wasn't about Midoriya or myself. For lack of anything better to do, I poked Kirishima. Skin Hardening, huh? I was prepared to say that I couldn't do anything for him, to try to take some attention off of me, but actually… "Your quirk gets stronger the more you use it, right?"

"Yeah man! Dude, you just knew right away, huh? That's so cool!" Kirishima said, his eyes … sparkling? No, burning with manly vigor.

I shrugged. "Part of what your quirk does is it leaves behind deposits in your skin to reactivate later. It doesn't do it evenly, though, so that's why you get all bumpy. I don't know if it'd work, but… maybe you could try body hardening exercises while your skin's all untransformed to get them spread out more?"

"Like in martial arts movies, where people hit you with sticks until you get used to it?" Kirishima asked. "That's manly as hell! I'm _so_ going to try that."

"Ahem!" All Might coughed. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, young men, but perhaps that is a conversation better reserved for another time!" The two of us stopped talking. On the monitors, Midoriya had finally caught up with Uraraka, and the two of them were now facing off against Iida Tenya. His speed was even faster than Midoriya's, but Midoriya could use the threat of touching the bomb to pressure him, and Uraraka could serve as yet another distraction. Tenya physically carried the bomb away from the 'Heroes' once or twice, but eventually Midoriya was able to get him into a corner, forcing him to meet Midoriya in melee. Uraraka soared through the air over the heads of the two of them, securing the Heroes' victory. "HEROES, WIIIIN!" All Might exclaimed, and turned to us all. "I'm going to go retrieve our competitors and bring them back here for grading," All Might said with a swirl of his cape as he dramatically turned towards the door. With a last cry of "Wait right here!" He darted out the door.

After All Might left, there was a generalized chatter, everyone discussing the match, until Yaoyorozu posed a question that got everyone's attention. "Rather than a pot of water - not that Hikigaya-san's metaphor wasn't a good one, but as powerful as Midoriya's quirk is, it reminds me more of a nuclear reactor than a pot of water."

I raised an eyebrow. "How so? Just in power level, or is there something else special about nuclear reactors?"

"Critical Mass." Yaoyorozu said. "A fire raises temperatures evenly, but the body is made up of cells, just like fissile material is made of atoms. If Midoriya had a mutation quirk that only worked one cell at a time, but which increased the speed at which nearby cells mutated, then it could be a situation where until the haruspex indemnified enough phlogiston, well, that's a bit imprecise, but you get what I'm saying -" I boggled at the idea that Yaoyorozu thought this was comprehensible as she continued 'explaining' for several minutes "- so don't you see, the cells in his body would be like a markov chain, switching to a different monte carlo attractor and then suddenly converting all of the cells in his body at once!" The rest of us mostly looked at Yaoyorozu in a combination of incomprehension and stupefaction, though Yukinoshita and Todoroki almost looked like they understood. As we all stared at her, Yaoyorozu blushed. "It's really nothing special," she said, wrapping her arms around herself uncomfortably. "It's just that once my parents realized that my quirk could create fissile materials, they took it upon themselves to make sure I understood enough nuclear physics to know why I shouldn't do so."

Happily, All Might returned with Uraraka and Iida just in time to distract us all from the fact that Yaoyorozu was potentially a walking tactical nuclear device. Midoriya and Bakugo had both been sent to the nurse's office, although this time it was Bakugo with the broken bones (just a rib, All Might assured us.) Privately, I felt relieved - I really wasn't in the mood to deal with Midoriya's gratitude or Bakugo's resentment. Naturally, Midoriya was judged the MVP of the match, though Iida was praised for his commitment to keeping the objective safe even after his teammate abandoned him and Uraraka was praised for trusting her teammate and continuing ahead to scout out their target. Even Bakugo wasn't judged too harshly; as All Might said, "take this as a cautionary example - many villains have unexpected uses for their abilities that they do not release to the general public! The biggest mistake that Bakugo-shonen made here was that he assumed that he knew what Midoriya-shonen could do, while not realizing that Midoriya-shonen knew his capabilities very well indeed! INFORMATION! Is sometimes the most powerful tool a hero can possess!"

There was a thoughtful silence at that, and then Kirishima elbowed me jocularly in the side. "Hey Hikigaya. Don't you know, like, everybody's quirk?"

I looked off to the side, uncomfortably aware that people were looking at me all over again. "... Not really."

"OKAY!" All Might shouted. "Let's head to the next area, where team… E as heroes will be fighting team C as villains!

Ouch. Inwardly, I said a quiet prayer for Ashido and Miura, who were going up against Yaoyorozu and Tobe after they had been given fifteen minutes to booby trap a location. To no-one's surprise, team C won handily due to their ability to ambush the 'heroes' with hidden flashbangs and Capture Tape bolas. The next fight, Team G vs. Team B, was similarly one-sided; Todoroki could throw up walls of ice to delay the heroes faster than Jiro could vibrate them down with her ear-spikes, and Shoji could form enough ears and eyes at the ends of his tentacle-arms to be able to pinpoint exactly where Todoroki should focus his efforts. Kaminari wasn't completely useless, but since he couldn't electrocute anything without being close enough to touch it, and because ice was a pretty bad conductor, he just couldn't find a way to contribute.

Finally, our number was up. Team J was set to act as heroes against team F as villains. As we got to the staging site, I looked over at Yukinoshita and Yuigahama, the latter of whom looked legitimately distressed to be facing off against me. Haaah. With a sigh, I headed over towards Yuigahama, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Oi, Yuigahama-san."

"Yes?" She said, turning around to face me. Through the clear faceplate of her helmet, I could see the complicated expression that she was wearing, though it quickly cleared into a false-looking smile.

"Listen. I didn't -" For a second, I stopped, not sure of what to say, and then I just sighed. I wanted to shove my hands into my pants pockets, but I didn't have any, so I just jammed them into my cloak instead, pulling it around me a little closer. "Honestly, Yuigahama-san, I'm not really comfortable with having anybody owe me for something that I would have done anyways," I said, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Oi, Yuigahama, look less shocked will you? It's not exactly hard to figure out what you're worried about, you know. "As far as I'm concerned, since you spoke up for me to the teachers at the entrance exam, you don't owe me anything," I continued. "Can we just - can we just forget about it? Get to know each other as classmates who never met before yesterday?"

Slowly, I watched as Yuigahama's smile shifted from fake to genuine. "Okay, Hikigaya-san. Let's do that." She extended her hand for a handshake, American-style. "Nice to meet you! I'm Yuigahama Yui, and you're going down, hero!"

"Hikigaya Hachiman," I said, and took her hand for a brief handshake. "Now get going, you've got fifteen minutes before I bring you to justice."

She stuck her tongue out at me, and then she ran into the building, passing Yukinoshita as she did so. For a second, it almost looked like the kimono-clad girl was going to come up to the two of us to say something as well, but the moment passed and Yukinoshita sped into the building after Yuigahama.

"Dude," Kirishima half-said, half-whispered reverentially. "You have _got_ to teach me how you do that."

My eyebrow twitched. "Whatever you're thinking, whatever you're implying, I assure you that you're wrong."

With a wide, sharp-toothed grin, Kirishima put his hands behind his head. "Whatever you say, Hikigaya. So, what's the play?"

It didn't take a lot of thought. "I think we should split up," I said, searching out the edifice ahead of us for potential clues and entry points. "I'm faster than both you and Yuigahama, so if I come across the two of them together I can withdraw to get Yukinoshita alone, while you're tough enough that if you get double-teamed you can probably hold out for a little while against them both. And one versus one, I think it's more or less fair fights all around, none of our quirks are particularly strong against any of the rest of us."

"Yeah, that makes sense!" Kirishima said, smacking his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "You have a copy of Hayama's flight quirk, right?" I nodded. "Do you think you can get up to the roof?" Kirishima asked.

"Not with the flying," I said looking at the exterior of the building, "But yeah, I can probably manage. Good thinking, I'll probably be able to get down to you faster and safer than you'd be able to get down to me if I hoisted you up and took the bottom floor myself."

"I could probably stick the landing with a full-body Harden if I really tried, but I might be a little messed up after, yeah," Kirishima agreed. "Anything I should know about their quirks?"

I thought about it for a second. "Once Yukinoshita sucks all of the heat out of the area, she gets less powerful, but that area's likely to get really cold and icy so I don't know if you should aim for that. Still, if you feel the area suddenly get colder, harden up. Yuigahama can control the fabric of your clothes if she gets within grabbing distance; you're mostly shirtless, so that's less of a problem for you, but maybe watch your legs around her so they don't get sewn together."

"Got it," he said with a nod. "What about…" Things continued on in that vein, mostly the two of us hashing out potential issues or problems, until finally the bell rang. Kirishima and I gave each other a nod, and both started off towards our chosen destinations. As he used his Hardened limbs to punch his way through the front door, I shot up to five meters in height, squatted down next to the building, and turned on Vulture Glide. With a mighty leap, I managed to hook one hand on the sill of a fourth floor window, and as soon as my fingers got a hold I promptly shrank back down to my normal height. My arm reeled me in to the windowsill as I shrunk, and the acceleration gave me enough lift that I could quickly scramble up onto the ledge. Looking down I felt a little dizzy from the height, but the fact that I basically had a parachute quirk made my nerves a lot easier to swallow. Turning away from the ground, I tried the window. It was locked. "Shit." I muttered to myself, and was surprised when Kirishima's voice came through the earbud in response.

"Everything alright, Hikigaya?" He asked. "No sign of them down here so far, if we need to we can regroup."

"No, no problem, I just need a minute." The 'magician's pockets' of my cloak hadn't come with any support items in them, but I had brought a few things from home that I thought might play well with my copied quirks. Reaching into a pocket, I pulled out a thin piece of string, and called on Yuigahama's Cloth Armor. Her quirk could control fabric up to a maximum of fifteen centimeters away, while I could barely manage four, but given that the window was only about two centimeters thick, four was all I needed. Placing my hand on the outside of the window opposite the lock, I used my telekinetic control of the thread to work it through the crack between the windows and to loop it around the latch. At first I tried to use the telekinetic thread to just move the latch itself, but my weakened quirk wasn't strong enough, so I just tied it in a loop around the latch and pulled it open with my hand on the other end of the string. "I'm in," I said over the radio, matching declaration to action as I slid open the window and crawled inside.

"First floor's clear," said Kirishima. "I'm headed your way."

"Copy," I said for the hell of it. Okay, the whole 'risking my life' thing was a terrible idea, but for now? Playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned building, messing around with my quirks, pretending to be a badass over the radio? I was actually sort of having fun. As I got to the stairwell leading to the fifth floor, though, that sense of excitement was replaced by trepidation. Yukinoshita was standing guard in the center of the corridor, her pale blue samurai-esque kimono standing out vividly against the dull grey of the walls. Between the paleness of her robes and her fair skin, Yukinoshita almost seemed to glow - no, that was her actually glowing, as she started sucking in heat from the environment and the air grew chill with frost. "Contact," I muttered to Kirishima. "Fourth floor, guarding the way upstairs. Yukinoshita only. Check the third just in case this is a decoy, but get up here quick." He said something in response, but I didn't really catch anything but the fact that he had agreed - right then, all of my focus was on Yukinoshita.

Yukinoshita started walking towards me slowly, her feet almost gliding across the polished cement floors of the corridor. "So, you split up as well? Hmph. As expected."

I tapped into Stockpile, feeling my limbs begin to fill with energy. "It only makes sense for the more mobile person to scout ahead, since they can retreat if it gets too rough. Speaking of which, are sure you want to do this here and now? Instead of running away and leading me straight back to your base?" Pasting a grin on my face, I put my hands up in a boxing-ish position, doing my best to remind myself that it was actually okay for me to hit a woman under the circumstances.

"Ara, Hikigaya-san," Yukinoshita said, raising one hand to her mouth in mock amusement. "How bold of you - to assume that I would need to retreat!" And with that, she started drawing heat in from the environment in earnest. The water in the air quickly condensed into ice, covering the walls and floor with frost and coalescing snowflakes out of thin air; Yukinoshita used that ice like a skating rink as she shot toward me.

In panic, I plugged the other end of Ooze into Yuki-onna and started drawing on the quirk that I had stored just last night, ripping the heat around me out of the air before she could get to it. I charged forward to meet her momentum, clumsily trying to jab at her as she got within range. As she blocked my first few strikes, I sighed in relief. My augmented strength, plus the little extra bit I got from her quirk, was enough to send her flying back a few dozen centimeters with every blow, only not knocking her off her feet because she was able to slide back far enough to keep her feet under her. Not that it was easy - Yukinoshita darted in and out of my reach like a boxer, taking the measure of my movement speed and my form, patiently getting used to my overwhelming physical superiority. That was okay, though, because I could be patient too. As we fought, the temperature of the air around us continued to drop, from wintry, to frigid, to arctic. Eventually, I was starting to have trouble pulling heat out of the air - which meant that Yukinoshita probably was too.

The whole corridor was like a meat locker, and I was slowly gaining the upper hand in our clashes. After one, Yukinoshita backpedaled a little further than average, leaving two or three meters between us. "It's not too late to surrender or to run, Yukinoshita-san," I said, adrenaline still singing in my veins. I crouched just a little, getting ready to chase and capture her if she did turn to run. "Either works for me."

"Do you know, Hikigaya-san?" Yukinoshita said, getting down into a combat stance once again. "You remind me a little bit of Bakugo-san. A strong quirk, excellent natural instincts -" She rushed forward. Once again I jabbed at her to fend her off, but all of a sudden she spun, bursts of snow-white energy coming from her feet that slid her around my left side like a dancer. Abruptly, her hands snaked around my outstretched punch, and a sudden kick to the back of my knee folded my leg down to the ground as she twisted my arm up behind me in a painful hold. "And zero combat training," she finished. I tried to rip my arm free of her grip, but she had all of the leverage, and all I wound up doing was nearly popping my shoulder out. "I'm afraid, Hikigaya-san, that all of the quirks in the world will do you no good if you don't know how to fight."

My face burned. How dare she take me down that easily? And with a quip about Bakugo, no less? Dammit, I was nothing like him! I looked over my shoulder at her, looking up the length of my arm toward her beautiful, impassive face, and grit my teeth in determination. "I know how to fight all right!" I shouted, "Dirty!" With the last dregs of my stockpiled Yuki-Onna quirk, I attempted to blast my arm free of her grip. She countered it easily, spending more of her limited reserves to keep me from getting free - but that was okay, because I actually wanted my arm right where it was. I abandoned the Yuki-Onna quirk, and almost immediately regretted it - my breath felt like knives in my lungs, and I could feel burning cold in my arm where Yukinoshita's hands were holding on to me. Despite the pain, I forcefully tapped into another stockpile, one with more than a ten percent charge, one that I hadn't used at all during the quirk assessment test yesterday.

All of a sudden, Yukinoshita wasn't holding on to an arm at all, but rather a water cannon, one that was pointed directly at her. "Eeek!" She screamed as the firehose blast smashed into her chest, pushing her away from me and thoroughly drenching her with water. Water that Yukinoshita's quirk promptly sucked all of the heat out of.

Grimacing in pain, I quickly switched back to copying the Yuki-Onna perk, suddenly seeming to breathe a little easier as the air seemed to warm. Knowing that that blast could only have pushed her off of me for a second, I spun in place to continue the battle, and then as I saw her I froze. Yukinoshita's kimono was a marvel of Support Company engineering. It was stylish, made of a fabric that could allow heat to flow through it effortlessly, and durable. It was also nearly white, fairly sheer, soaking wet, and plastered to the curves of Yukinoshita's body, where it had frozen in place. "Erk!" I made a guttural noise at the back of my throat, torn between looking away to grant her some modesty and keeping my eye on her in advance of her inevitable retaliation. Over my earpiece, I could hear All Might coughing as well in what I sincerely hoped was a super-speed motion to turn off our particular monitor.

For her part, Yukinoshita was beet red in the face, doubtless out of some combination of rage, embarrassment, and exertion as she struggled to free herself from the frozen wet robes. Blasts of white energy erupted from one of her arms, giving her enough range of motion to draw one arm in front of her gorgeous body "Hikigaya-san," she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. "I suggest you divert those lecherous eyes, or I will _remove them for you_."

Thinking quickly, I dashed past Yukinoshita, getting behind her faster than she could finish breaking out of her frozen clothing. With one hand, I reached into a cloak pocket, pulled out the roll of capture tape, and wrapped it around her, after which I removed my cloak entirely and wrapped that around her as well. "Sorry about that," I muttered to Yukinoshita, my face burning almost as bright as red as hers. "You gonna be alright here, or do I need to help get you out of there before you get frostbite?"

Slightly mollified now that she was covered, Yukinoshita shook her head, not meeting my eyes. "My Quirk protects me from the effects of the cold. I'll be fine."

"Hikigaya! I've found Yuigahama, you were right, they were on the third floor! Oh, shit, she's fast!" "Villain Yukinoshita has been captured!" Voices overlapped in my earbud - first Kirishima's, then All Might's.

"Gotta go," I shouted, and giving Yukinoshita no more thought - well, that was a lie, but pushing the sight of her into a corner of my brain to consider later - I dashed off towards the stairway down. "Hang in there, Kirishima!" I shouted into the mic. "I'm on my way!"

"I'm trying, but - shit! She keeps throwing me around, and my hits keep just bouncing off of her!" My footsteps echoed down the long hallway as I charged towards the stairs down, bouncing off the walls as I took corners to avoid slowing down. "Dammit, take this!" Kirishima shouted. "Riot… STRAImmmph!"

"In a stunning reversal, Hero Kirishima has been immobilized!" All Might's voice rang into my ear _just_ as I finally reached the stairway down. Dammit, Kirishima, couldn't you have held on for thirty more seconds?

As I reached the ground floor, I finally saw what Kirishima meant about Yuigahama being fast. The white bandages around her legs and her left arm had unwrapped themselves from around her limbs, coiling in the air to create something almost like giant springs made of fabric. Yuigahama pogoed up and down on those springs in the middle of the room, where my partner had been blindfolded and hogtied with what had to have been the bandages now absent from her right arm. The bomb that I had to reach for victory was in the corner of the room, as far away from both staircases as possible, and debris had been piled up around one side so that it was only approachable from the front. Unfortunately for me, Yuigahama was guarding the approaches to the bomb quite thoroughly, and was bright enough not to come charging after me in the stairwell where I could get her out of position.

I spent a few seconds trying to figure out the best way to approach, but looking at the bomb I realized that I was running out of time - there were only fifty-nine seconds left on the clock! Well, if those cloth-springs made Yuigahama that much more dangerous in close range, I decided, I'll just have to avoid getting too close. I reached for a pocket to grab the wooden stick I used for Kamui Woods' power, only to realize that I had left it behind with Yukinoshita. Luckily, there were some bits of wood lying around in the debris of the third floor, and as I finally charged into the room I scooped it up and started it growing. It was just brittle pine, not nearly as good as the hickory I had left in my cloak, but I didn't really need it to stay sturdy for long, just long enough for me to hammer Yuigahama out of the way and get to the bomb. Yuigahama seemed to realize that as well, because she pogoed towards me in great bounding steps, occasionally bouncing between the wall and the ceiling in order to move faster.

Just as I had done to the robots in the entrance exam, as she got close enough I switched to Death Arms and swung the pinewood stick like it was a glaive, hitting her right over her kidneys and knocking her sideways. As I had expected, it shattered immediately on impact.

What I hadn't expected was that Yuigahama's bodysuit would shatter as well. Apparently, Kirishima had put enough punches into her armor that it had been hanging on by a literal and figurative thread. As Yuigahama fell to the floor I got an eyeful of pale skin and white lace, which then proceeded to become more than an eyeful as Yuigahama started to get up, realized her situation, and then screamed in embarrassment, squatting back down where she had fallen. My libido surged. Dammit, why was this bodysuit so tight?

In order to keep from giving Yuigahama - and for that matter, anybody watching from the monitors, dammit - an eyeful as well, I dashed past her to the bomb, tagging it and ending the exercise with sixteen seconds to spare. After doing so, I hunched over forwards to 'catch my breath' for a few seconds before I finally turned back around. Yuigahama had used the time to fashion herself a crude one-piece dress out of the remaining strips of bandages that she had been moving around with, so I headed over towards Kirishima and removed his blindfold and restraints. "Dude, we won?" he said as All Might announced our victory over the radio. "Awesome! Sorry I wasn't more help, though."

"No, uh…" I said, thinking fast. "You actually did a lot of damage to Yuigahama's armor. I don't think I would have been able to beat her if you hadn't gotten all those hits in." Dammit, if I'm going down, you're going down with me!

Kirishima looked at Yuigahama in her makeshift dress, back to me, over to Yukinoshita as All Might carried her over, still wrapped up in my cloak for modesty, back to me… and just gave me a thumbs-up. I didn't do it on purpose, dammit!

The after-action report was exactly as awkward as you would expect after events like those happened. Yuigahama and Yukinoshita had been given leave to go change into their gym uniforms; the rest of the girls looked at me with suspicion and distrust as we discussed the results of the exercise, while the guys looked at me with a combination of admiration and envy. All Might, thankfully, was a little more reasonable. "Before we discuss the battle, we should probably discuss a facet of the pro-hero life that would have come up later in the curriculum! Embarrassment! Frankly, you kids, there are a lot of ways that fabrics can rip or tear when you're fighting Villains with super-strength, or acid sprays, or razor claws. Pros put it all on the line, whether it's our lives, or our modesties! This is the sort of thing that Midnight teaches in more detail in her classes, but to summarize it for the moment, I'm afraid that the occasional costume malfunction is unavoidable in our line of work! Now, I'm sure that none of you will look down on Yukinoshita-shojo nor Yuigahama-shojo for the mishaps they suffered, correct?" There was a generalized mutter of agreement from everyone in the class. "And Hikigaya-shonen, your role in causing those mishaps was completely accidental, correct?"

"Of course!" I shouted hotly, my face burning with embarrassment.

"There you have it," All Might pronounced. "Please, assign no blame to Hikigaya-shonen for his role in this as well. Again, Midnight will cover things like this in more detail, but manufactured media scandals and twisted interpretations of innocent facts are also, sadly, an unavoidable part of a pro's life." … Said the guy teaching at U.A. to look after his secret love child.

Still, All Might's pronouncements seemed to clear the air. They made me reconsider the whole 'pro hero' thing yet again, but at least the atmosphere was less awkward afterwards. Even when Yukinoshita and Yuigahama returned to the class, while there was a moment when Yukinoshita returned my cloak in which none of us could meet each other's eyes, we were all able to finish class peacefully and normally.

It wasn't until I was putting my costume away at the end of the day that I realized that the pictures my parents had oh-so-helpfully included in the design specifications for my costume… were in a different pocket than I had originally put them in.


	7. Surprisingly, Hero Coursework isn't

**A/N: If you read the last chapter the night it came out, you may wish to go back and check again - I made two minor changes to it after it was originally published. Namely, the photos getting sent to the support company was Hachiman's fault, and Yukinoshita only saw the photos & replaced them rather than actually stealing them for no good reason. Thanks again to Pinklestia for beta reading!**

 **Also, check out the Spacebattles thread if you want to see OreGaHero's first fan art by the amazing EnderHeart Enya!  
And now, the story.**

In comparison to the first two days of the Hero course at U.A., the rest of the week was much less physically demanding. It only made sense; unlike me, most people didn't have a regeneration quirk, and while Recovery Girl could heal serious injuries with a kiss, most students needed rest days in order to recover from muscle strains, quirk overuse, and all of the other attendant difficulties inherent to the Hero Course. No, there were plenty of days that only involved lectures or coursework, days that a manga focused on the so called 'exciting' pieces of our lives might choose to skip over entirely. And then, of course, the anime version would likely add a bit of it as a filler episode, with some cheap comedy. Thankfully no one used laugh tracks anymore. Maybe some slapstick? Would I keep accidentally seeing girls naked or something like that? I honestly hope nothing like that happened again… mostly. Dammit Zaimokuza, get out my head! Just because I talked to you once or twice doesn't mean you can infest me with your shitty and cheap Web Novel ideas! Which reminded me, I should really check in on him to see what he was doing. Where had he gone to high school, anyways?

Despite all that, I rarely had time for extraneous thoughts. Just because those days weren't physically strenuous doesn't mean that they weren't demanding in other ways. _Ker-crack!_ "You!" The Over-18 Heroine Midnight said with a crack of her whip, pointing it at a hapless Kaminari Denki. "What do you think of first when you hear my name?"

"I, um, uhhh…" Kaminari stammered, clearly uncomfortable at having been put on the spot. Quietly, I thanked any deities listening for the fact that it hadn't been me. "Um, your, um, your pictures - that is, the way you look, um, your record, your, um, news about you," he trailed off, clearly not willing to go too far or to risk offending a teacher.

Midnight shifted her posture slightly, and the atmosphere around her shifted from an intimidating aura to a more neutral impression. "Would it be fair to say that you first think of my appearance and my reputation?"

"Uh, yeah," Kaminari said. "Totally."

Midnight nodded. "Thank you, Kaminari-san, for answering a deliberately difficult question. In case you were all wondering, yes, I do know that my reputation is a bit less than sterling - some might say racy, others might say that it verges on or enters into the realm of the inappropriate." Oi, your reputations a ways past that! _Ker-crack!_ Another crack of her whip, this time finishing with Midnight pointing directly at Miura. "You! Given that I have a less-than-perfect reputation, why am I teaching Public Relations at U.A. High School?"

In comparison to Kaminari, Miura was far less discomfited at being put on the spot, though still a little bit shocked. "I -" Miura paused for a moment to think about it. "I'm sorry sensei, but I don't know."

Again, Midnight reverted back to a more ordinary posture. "Good answer, Miura," Midnight said, and she took a few steps to sit down informally on the desk at the front of the room. "Knowing that you don't know something is step one to fixing that problem. Here's a third question, one for anyone in the room, but it's also rhetorical so don't bother shouting out answers just yet. Why would someone choose a scandalous hero name such as 'the Over-18 hero, Midnight', rather than something safe and relatively more socially acceptable like 'the Sleepy Swimsuit hero, Sandwoman?'"

There was a profound silence as she let that thought sink in, and then Midnight brought our attention back to her with a loud clap of her hands. "First things first. My name is Nemuri Kayama, the Pro Hero Midnight. I prefer that you all call me Nemuri-sensei or Midnight-sensei. Despite any misconceptions that you may have about me, I am here teaching you Public Relations because I am very, very good at my job. Now, normally this class would start with some lectures on branding, insignias, name recognition, and so on to get you all ready to choose hero names before you start with internships and apprenticeships. This year, however, we're going to be mixing things up a little bit. Can you guess why?"

Midoriya raised his hand, shaking a little bit with nervousness. "U-um, is it b-because of All Might?"

"Correct!" Midnight said, slapping the desk next to her with her flogger for emphasis. "There's going to be a lot more media attention on U.A. this year. 'Heroes mean headlines' is basically a media truism in this day and age, and reporters are going to be flocking around here like vultures, asking you all about what it's like to be taught by All Might, and so on. So, we're going to be switching some things around to give you more tools to handle the media right off the bat."

She paused, but nobody spoke up. "Okay. So, that's the bad news. The good news is, this media attention also represents an opportunity for you all." There was a rustle of excitement, a subtle shifting in everyone's seats as all of my highly motivated classmates perked up to listen better. For my own part, I was listening closely as well, if only to figure out how to avoid as much of all this fame and attention as possible. "Normally, the media doesn't even bother with first years until the Sports Festival. Since the media is already going to be potentially looking into you all, we're going to skip forward a few steps and actually start building your reputations right away."

With that, Midnight hopped off the desk, pulled down a projection screen, and flipped on the projector with a remote. What it showed was what looked to be a blank form titled 'Hero Assistance Request' at the top. "This," Midnight said while thwacking the projection screen with a riding crop, "Is a Hero Assistance Request form. They've already been passed out to your classmates in the General Education, Business, and Support classes. Basically, these are a way for you to all to start getting hands-on practice at interacting with the community. A significant chunk of neighborhood heroing doesn't involve fighting villains or performing disaster relief, but rather getting cats out of trees, mediating disputes, and helping little old ladies carry their groceries; in other words, it's stuff that you don't even need a quirk to do - which is handy, because none of you have your provisional licenses yet, so you wouldn't be allowed to use them in any case."

Midnight grinned, enjoying the consternation on the faces of a few of the other people in class. "Don't think this is just make-work, kids. Aside from giving you all practice talking to ordinary citizens, it's also helping you build up your fanbases, giving you connections to people in the Support and Business tracks, creating people who in five years will be able to say in TV interviews that you were helpful and friendly even as teenagers… and, because you'll be working in groups, it'll be teaching you teamwork."

Ugh. Group work. Either an excuse for popular people to pressure their classmates of lower social status into doing the majority of the work while they chit-chat and have fun, and subsequently using their so-called 'superior presentation skills' to take credit for all of the unpopular student's hard work, or an excuse for one member of a group to be marginalized, ignored, 'accidentally' left off of group text messages telling them where the group meetup is occurring, and then blamed for all of the group's failures at the final grade. Well, nobody really knew that much about each other yet, so it was possible that this particular example wouldn't be that bad - "... Group D: Hikigaya, Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, Bakugo. Group E: Hayama, Jiro, Kaminari, Miura. That's all." - wait, _what_ did she just say? I had to have heard that incorrectly, right? There's no way that they would have placed me into a team with the three people least likely to get along with me, would they?

I looked around the room. A considerable percentage of it was looking at me with pity and schadenfreude in their eyes, with three notable exceptions. Bakugo, who looked irritated, although I supposed that wasn't particularly unusual for him. Yukinoshita, who looked subtly disgusted. And Yuigahama, who was doing her best to try to smile at me and look cheerful, but who actually looked a little bit constipated. It was official. I was doomed. "And yes," Midnight said with a note of sadistic cheer in her voice. "The groups are final, so don't bother arguing. In the meantime, if you kids need them, there are study rooms across the hallway that you can split into in order to discuss your assignments privately. Have fun~!"

"Wait! Sensei!" Miura stood up slightly, hurriedly trying to get her attention before everyone broke off into separate groups.

Midnight raised a condescending eyebrow. "Are you deaf? I already said the groups were final."

Shaking her head, Miura said "No, it's not about that. You never answered that hypothetical question you gave us. Why did you decide to be… Midnight, instead of someone else?"

"Ah." Midnight said, stamping her fist sideways onto her open palm, "Right, almost forgot. Well, there are two reasons. First, with me being an openly and publicly racy heroine, every other hero whose powers require that they wear skin-tight clothing, or no clothing," she said with meaningful looks at Yaoyorozu and Hagakure, "looks less offensive by comparison. It gives some cover from social indignation to all the girls out there who are worried that their powers might be too embarrassing to use."

Whoa, careful there Nemuri-sensei, I thought to myself. If you keep saying cool things like that, I might almost start to respect you!

Then Midnight smiled, licking her lips openly and sensuously. "Secondly, and most importantly… it's my hobby."

Aaaand there it went. Well, that didn't last long. As if slightly stunned, everybody quietly filtered off into their respective meeting rooms - someone, probably Midnight-sensei, had helpfully taped signs to the doors indicating who went where - and I soon found myself in a room that looked like it was normally used for storing spare chairs and desks, all of which had been shoved up against one wall to create a space just long enough for a single long, narrow table and a few chairs. Bakugo slouched in one chair, tipping it back to lean up against the wall, while Yukinoshita sat at the head of the table like she was holding court, Yuigahama attending at her right hand. Doing my best not to scowl, I noisily scraped a chair over to the foot of the table opposite Yukinoshita, sitting at a right angle to the table rather than directly facing it so that I wouldn't have my back to the door in case someone came in.

And then we sat. Silently. For almost a full minute, seemingly nobody willing to make the first move and actually say something. A manila folder detailing our assignment sat in the middle of the table, so far unopened, none of us willing to say anything.

"Eh heh heh, so, I guess we'd better get started, huh?" Yuigahama, that brave soul, was the first to break the awkward atmosphere of the room. Of course, that only meant that she was immediately rebuffed.

"Tche." Bakugo clicked his tongue, "I don't see the point of this kind of boring-ass shit." He scowled. "Any stupid extra can get a cat down from a tree. Ain't we supposed to be here to learn how to be heroes?"

Yukinoshita frowned at Bakugo. "You.. _are_ aware that 'extras' are a fictional concept and that no such thing exists in the real world? If not, I really might begin to question U.A.'s admission process."

"Heh. Sounds like the sort of thing an extra would say." Bakugo rolled his eyes at Yukinoshita. "You know what I mean. Some asshole uses his quirk to snatch a purse, the police don't call All Might, they call some random C-lister or they just take care of it themselves. U.A. is supposed to be a school for the best of the best, so why are they bothering us with shit that anybody could do?"

"Midnight-sensei gave us a list of reasons," Yukinoshita said calmly. "I suppose it's not inconceivable that all of those explosions might have damaged your eardrums; are you aware schools of U.A.'s caliber generally have assistive learning services for the hard of hearing?"

"What did you just say you little -" Bakugo shouted, sitting forward, his chair landing hard on the tile floor.

"I could write it down for you," Yukinoshita interrupted, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction, "if you're having trouble hearing things the first time."

"Screw you!" Bakugo shouted, punctuating his retort with an explosion. "I heard you just fine! And her, too! What I'm saying is, most of what Midnight said is just bullshit! You really think anything we do today's gonna matter once we start taking down actual villains?" He snorts. "They're just having us do fucking busywork! Fuck! I thought this shit'd be different from junior high!"

Ugh. It wasn't like I disagreed with Bakugo; actually, in my opinion he was probably more right than wrong. But if he bailed, that meant that working on whatever our project was would be down to me, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama, and that just sounded like a recipe for disaster. No, if I didn't want to be left alone with two girls who had every reason to hate my guts, I had to keep Bakugo from bailing on us. So naturally, I insulted him. "So, you've given up already?" I asked.

"Huuuuh? Say that again, I dare you." Bakugo's eyes narrowed in my direction.

Still sitting sideways to the table, not really bothering to look in his direction, I did so. "Oh, it's nothing. I just thought, man, if I were already giving up on my declaration of not letting anyone else take first place, the easiest way would be to declare that all of the _hard_ contests didn't really matter."

A couple of small explosions went off in Bakugo's hands, little pop pop pops like fireworks. "Fuck you, you shitty extra, I said it was fucking busywork, not that I wasn't gonna fucking do it! What's so hard about this shit?"

"Ah. My mistake." I said, keeping my tone neutral. "When we actually talk to our client, talking formally won't be a problem, then?"

Bakugo's mouth opened a little wider, as if to yell more, and then he closed it with another click of his tongue. "Tche. It isn't like I don't know how, I just never see the f-" he stopped again for a brief second, then resumed." - the flipping point."

"Ah. Got it," I said. Unfortunately, with that one potential problem cut off, silence descended back onto the storage room where we all sat. The seconds ticked on, until finally Bakugo broke the silence once again.

"So, are we all just gonna sit around with our thumbs up our asses, or are we actually gonna find out what the job is?" he growled, glaring over at Yuigahama where she held the folder.

"Oh! Right!" Yuigahama said, opening the folder over by her and Yukinoshita. In addition to the request form itself, there was also a photo of the requester; I caught a glimpse of a pretty face and white hair before the folder was laid flat. Yukinoshita saw it too, because she leaned forward slightly to examine it.

"Yuigahama-san," Yukinoshita said, "it appears that our client is a girl. We may need to take precautions."

"Oi. What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, my eyebrow twitching in irritation.

"Only that between your propensity for overdoing things when acting on a pretty girl's behalf and the questionable nature of your actions the other day, we may want to set up some ground rules ahead of time to keep your disreputable gaze from inconveniencing our client," Yukinoshita stated frankly.

"Hmph," I said, rolling my eyes at Yukinoshita. "If anybody's going to make somebody uncomfortable by looking at them, it's you with that judgemental look on your face. You do know that accidents happen, right?"

Yukinoshita nodded. "They do, which is why I only labeled your actions as questionable, despite your proven capabilities in analyzing quirks and their weaknesses."

"Shit, Hikigaya. You give her opponent yesterday a last-minute powerup too or something?" Bakugo said resentfully.

I blinked at him. I looked at the girls, then back to him. "Um. I was her opponent. Well, it was me and Kirishima against the two of them, really. You, uh, didn't hear?"

Bakugo scoffed. "Yeah, right. Like I don't got better shit to do than to listen to gossip about extras." Mentally, I translated that into a 'no, nobody told him.' Well, I suppose he isn't exactly the sort of person to make fast friends… not that I'm anyone to talk. "So what, you're pissed because he beat you?" Bakugo continued, directing his question to Yukinoshita. "Tche. If you've got time to be pissed, you've got time to get over it and start getting stronger so it doesn't happen again."

Yukinoshita, for once, actually blushed a little bit. "No, it wasn't the loss. It was -" she paused for a second, "- he used his quirk to -" another pause, "- well, he wound up using his quirk to see rather more of both of us than we would have preferred him to."

Before I could come up with anything to say in my own defense, Yuigahama butted in. "Um, Yukinon, I'm sure it wasn't Hikki's fault. Even All Might-sensei said these sorts of things happen all the time, and we wound up seeing _that_ by accident too, s-so, um, let's all get along, all right?"

As my heart sank into my stomach, Yukinoshita's lips quirked up into a tiny smile. "Hm." it was barely even a laugh, just one single close-mouthed chuckle, but I still died inside. "Yes, you're right," Yukinoshita said. "let's -"

Suddenly, she was cut off by a knock on the door. "U-um, is this service group D?" a soft, demure voice called from the outside. Slowly, the door slid open. The voice's owner was a white-haired beauty with sparkling blue eyes; between the short bob cut of her hair and the gym uniform she was wearing, she looked like an athlete, and the wide smile on her face was so pure and innocent that it looked totally genuine, even to me. "Thank you so much for accepting my request!"

For a second, we all sat there with poleaxed expressions on our faces, trying to figure out how to tell this pure individual that we had no idea what her request was, because we still hadn't gotten around to reading it yet, but I quickly managed to rally myself. "Well, we're certainly happy to help you out," I said, stretching the truth only a little, "but can you explain just a little bit more about what you want us to do and why you need our help to do it?"

"Sure!" she replied brightly. "U-um, basically, I really like tennis. I've been playing it my whole life, and even my quirk is a little bit tennis-like, so when I came to U.A. I was really looking forward to being in the Tennis Club! But, um…" The girl looked to the side, as if not quite sure how to say something. "Apparently there aren't very many members left from the upperclassmen, and the ones who are still here aren't very good. And not a lot of people want to join a sports club because they'd rather be practicing with their quirks to try to get into the Hero Course, or because our Sports Festival doesn't put a lot of emphasis on Quirkless sports like tennis, and stuff like that. So I was really hoping you guys could help me find a way to recruit more people, especially if they're athletes!" And with that, she gave us a cute little formal bow.

"Well, we will do our best," Yukinoshita said, settling the manila folder full of paperwork by rapping it on the table. "Team D consists of myself, Yukinoshita Yukino, this is Yuigahama Yui, over by the wall there is Bakugo Katsuki, and in front of you is Hikigaya Hachiman." I gave the white-haired girl a nod as my name was spoken. "And you were… Totsuka Saika, correct?"

"Yes! Nice to meet you!" Totsuka said with a brilliant smile and tilting her head slightly to the side. C-Cute! My heart practically skipped a beat. I could feel a surge of red beginning to tint my cheeks, and I had to cough into my fist a little bit to try and hide it.

"Okay!" Yuigahama said brightly. "Well, this doesn't seem too hard, right? I'm sure we can come up with something to help you! Come on in, have a seat!"

Totsuka did, sitting anxiously with her knees pressed together. I kind of wanted to pat her head to reassure her, or something. "Um, so, I figured that I'd probably have to take charge of the club," she said, "so I need to polish my skills enough that it's not too weird for a first-year to be in charge, and I'm hoping that if everyone else sees me working hard they'll follow suit, but other than that I don't really have any ideas for how to get new members once I'm in charge or for how to make the ones who are still there get serious about practice or anything like that. Have any of you guys been in charge of a club before, or anything like that?"

"Hmph," Bakugo grunted, still balancing his chair back against the wall. "Not me. I was too busy training to go pro." I could believe it - he had nearly as much muscle as I did, and I was a dirty cheater who didn't have to work for it.

"I attempted to join athletic clubs a couple of times," volunteered Yukinoshita. "Unfortunately, after I began thoroughly outclassing everyone else in the club despite only being a beginner, they would always ask me to leave." Totsuka made an adorably dismayed face in response to this. Inwardly, I agreed. I couldn't tell whether she was bragging, or asking to be pitied. Totsuka's feelings showed on her face, though, so Yukinoshita quickly clarified that "Ah, but I also had other issues with my classmates in junior high. I don't think there'd be a problem if you were the strongest player on your team."

Yuigahama laughed nervously. "Ahaha, um, I was in the fashion club in junior high but I wasn't the leader or anything, so I dunno. But! Um, I remember a lot of the stuff we did to find members, so that's probably helpful, right?" Thankfully, this seemed to cheer Totsuka up, and she nodded in agreement.

And then everyone looked at me. Well, normally I would have said that I was the 'President' of the Go Home Club, but there was a cute girl there who I hadn't already mortally offended, so I decided to try to be slightly less lame, not that I was capable of much in that direction but every little bit helped. "Well, I don't really have any experience either, but I don't think recruiting is going to be too complicated, honestly," I began to explain. "If we make ads or something that emphasize Totsuka-chan's feminine appeal, I'm sure a lot of boys would be interested."

Totsuka pouted at me. "Um… Hikigaya-san…" she said, looking up at me through long eyelashes.

"Yes?" I asked, already bracing for a preemptive rejection. Well, it wasn't exactly my first time getting shot down by a cute gi-

"I'm a boy," Totsuka finished.

"Ah," I said intelligibly. "I see."

"It's - well, I don't want to say it's actually okay, because I hate it when this happens, but it isn't the first time, so it's not your fault." Totsuka-chan, no, Totsuka-kun said, still kind of pouting in an adora - in a slightly feminine way.

"Ah." I said, still recovering from the perspective whiplash. "Sorry." Dammit, why am I the only one who catches blame for this? Even Yukinoshita thought he was a girl initially!

Bakugo snorted in derision. "Okay, then. First thing we do is we work on your upper body some so that you look less like a wuss. I should have some old training plans from a few years ago that'd be about your speed…" Totsuka wilted slightly. I'm not sure if it was the insult, or the implication that he was only as strong as Bakugo had been in elementary school.

"Indeed," Yukinoshita chimed in. "If you run until you die, do pushups until you die, and do lunges until you die, then you should show some results quickly… probably, anyways." Totsuka wilted further. "Ah, and I can give you some copies of my agility training plans. You can probably complete… at least the first ten to twenty percent of them?"

Before our client's morale could plummet further, I spoke up. "We'll be training right there next to you, of course," as much fun as _that_ would be, "and I wouldn't call myself a pro, but I probably know enough about tennis to be a decent training partner for you."

"What about me?" Yuigahama asked, and I frowned for a second in thought.

"Well, you can help Totsuka with his training, of course," I said, mulling an idea over in my mind, "but maybe you could also take a look at the Tennis Club uniforms? If they're old or outdated, maybe you could alter them a little bit?"

"Yeah! I could do that!" Yuigahama said excitedly, before her face fell. "Oh wait, maybe not. We're not supposed to use our Quirks for this."

"We're not allowed to use them in _public_ ," I corrected her. "Not without our licenses. But if you took uniforms home or something, I'm sure nobody would know or care whether you used your quirk or a sewing machine to alter them."

"Ah! That's true!" Yuigahama said. "Okay! Leave it to me!"

"And while we're on the subject of quirks… Totsuka-san, you said you had a quirk that was vaguely tennis-related?" I asked, an idea percolating in the back of my mind. "Is it something that would be useful in an event like the Sports Festival?"

"Huh?" Totsuka said, tilting his head sideways adorably. "Mmm, I suppose it could be? I don't know, I don't really use it that often. And I'm not really that interested in becoming a pro hero, so I sort of thought I'd just skip it, or maybe just participate for the experience."

"Well, what if you participated to build awareness for the Tennis Club?" I pointed out. "Sure, most people do it to show they have what it takes to be pro heroes, but there's no actual rule saying that you have to be a hero even if you do well. And on the other hand, getting in and doing well would raise your visibility and be great advertising."

"Oi," Bakugo called out to me, his eyebrow twitching. "Don't take the sports festival so lightly. It's not somewhere that any random extra can just... try to be competitive."

"Hmm. You're probably right," said Tostuka, "but if it worked, then Hikigaya-san is right, it'd be really helpful! And if not, then it's not like it's exactly a bad goal to shoot for."

"Tche. Your funeral," Bakugo said, flexing his fingers like he was going to make Totsuka explode right then and there, "because if you're serious about trying to keep up with the pros, you really are going to have to work like you're going to die."

And to Totsuka's credit, he did. For the next several days, Yukinoshita, Bakugo, Yuigahama, and I ran the Tennis Club not-yet-President into the ground. Bakugo and Yukinoshita supervised upper body and lower body drills respectively, while Yuigahama and I followed along with Totsuka so that he wasn't just doing the exercises alone. Yuigahama, used to depending on her quirk to boost her strength, suffered a bit; I was in good enough overall shape that I could finish most of the exercises without too many problems, but as soon as Bakugo saw that I wasn't having any problems with regular push-ups, he made me switch to exercises like clapping push-ups and one armed push-ups, both of which _sucked_. Yukinoshita's agility drills on the other hand were tricky from the start, and once I was okay at a lower speed all I had to do to make them harder was to go faster. For his part, Totsuka was only slightly better off than Yuigahama, but he suffered through all of the exercises gamely, not complaining even when his whole body was dripping with sweat.

Once we finished the hardcore workouts, we would switch to technique drills, volleying balls at Totsuka at the outdoor tennis court and running him ragged, and then when he was starting to get exhausted, letting him practice teaching us tennis moves and so on in preparation for similarly teaching his club members later. That was a little bit challenging, to be honest; of the four of us, I already had pretty good tennis skills, Bakugo tended not to listen very well and then made up for it all with raw natural reflexes, and Yukinoshita had the incredibly obnoxious habit of picking up everything flawlessly on the first try. Luckily, we still had Yuigahama.

A couple of times, we managed to book time in the Quirk Gym, which was always in high demand since it was legally required for a licensed quirk user to be supervising quirk practice at all times, and there was a limited supply of both supervisors and practice spaces while simultaneously almost everybody was trying to get time to practice with their quirks before the Sports Festival. Totsuka's quirk was called Reflect Racket, an Emitter quirk that let him create glowing blue ovals in midair that canceled and reversed the velocities of anything that they touched, and which he could either conjure in stationary positions or move relative to a part of his body. Naturally, it only took me about five minutes after I copied his quirk to start jailbreaking it.

"So? Do you think there's something I can do with my quirk to make it more useful?" Totsuka asked naively, swinging a blue oval pane of force around like it was a tennis racket. "I know I can swing my quirk into things, and that can knock them over and stuff if they aren't attached to the ground, but it's not very good for actually, um. Hurting villains, or anything like that."

"Yeah, I have a few ideas," I said, conjuring one of my own discs as I did so. Predictably, mine were only about the size of the palm of my hand, and only slowed things down rather than reversing their direction, but they were still useful as demonstration aids. "If you practice creating them relative to parts of your body that aren't your hands, you can create armor," I said, a blue-glowing oval appearing over my shoulder, then in front of my chest as examples. "And it's even armor that doesn't slow you down when it gets hit, which is amazing." Next, I conjured a blue disc next to my foot, tilted up at a 45 degree angle or so. "If you create them next to your feet specifically, and leave them static, you can use them as ways to change your direction instantaneously, without having to worry about traction or your leg strength." I tried stepping on my pane of force, which immediately broke, but he understood what I meant. "You could probably even use them to walk on air, once you got good enough at keeping your balance as you bounced around. Or at arm or chest height, you could push off of them to get back to your feet if you got knocked off balance… well, that's what comes to mind to start off with, anyways."

Totsuka's mouth dropped open. "Hikigaya… are you a Quirk Counselor?"

"Heh." I scoffed, my voice dripping with derision. "Don't even talk to me about Quirk Counselors. I must have seen one every week for like half a year, trying to get my quirk to be less useless. He kept giving me all sorts of exercises, trying to teach me how to make weak quirks useful and stuff like that, but eventually he just… gave up on me or something." I frowned, thinking about it. Dr. Kobayakawa had been just another shitty adult, but for a while he had been a shitty adult that I had kind of liked. "So yeah, when he decided that my power was never going to be useful, he switched to trying to convince me to be a quirk counselor like him, instead of actually helping me like he was supposed to, so I stopped going." Looking up, I noticed that everyone was looking at me with weird expressions on their faces, so I shrugged. "What? It's fine. I did pick up some useful skills from it all, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time."

"Ah, Hikigaya-san," Yukinoshita ventured, "isn't it possible that they were simply trying to encourage you to become a quirk counselor because they thought you'd be good at it?"

"Pfff. Me? Him?" I shook my head reflexively. "I _sincerely_ doubt it. Now come on, let's get practicing, we've only got the gym for the next hour."

For the next week and a half, the five of us sort of fell into a routine, working out, using our quirks, and all getting better at tennis together. It was even kind of fun. If not for the fact that it was an event with mandatory participation, I might even have let myself wonder if this was what it felt like to have friends. So naturally, it wasn't long before someone came to disrupt our peaceful equilibrium.

"Oh, you guys are playing tennis too?" Looking over in the direction of the voice, I saw that it belonged to Hayama Hayato from our class. Behind him were Jiro, Kaminari, Miura, and two boys that I didn't recognize, a shorter, wiry-looking guy with scruffy hair and weaselly eyes, and a taller, brawnier guy with a flat nose and a slightly dull expression. All of them were in athletic uniforms, and holding tennis rackets. "Mind if we join in?"

I looked at them, then down to Totsuka, who was currently sitting on the ground gasping and covered in sweat, with both of his knees skinned raw from a bad collision with the ground. (In theory, I could have used some of my stockpile of Recovery Girl's quirk to fix it, but I was saving that for emergencies, plus it would have been really embarrassing, so I didn't. Instead, Yukinoshita had gone off to grab some medical supplies.) "Actually, yeah," I said, a note of irritation entering my voice, "we're not playing around here. This is for our assignment for Midnight-sensei's class."

"What a coincidence," Miura said, a snide note entering her voice, "that's what we're here for too. Ōoka and Yamato are trying to get in shape for the Sports Festival, and tennis is great for agility and reflex training."

"So are, like, a million other things," I said. "Totsuka-san is trying to specifically get good at tennis, so he can help out the Tennis Club. Can't you find someplace to train that isn't going to just get in our way?"

"Aw, come on, man," Kaminari said, an irrepressibly cheerful grin on his face, "don't be like that. Why don't we all just play together? We'll help your guy train, and you can help ours, it'll be fun!"

There was a sharp pop as Bakugo drew attention to himself, setting off an explosion in his hand. "Yo," Bakugo said, a couple of smaller pops going off afterwards, crackling like fireworks. "If training is fun, you're doing it wrong. This shit ain't no game. Girlyboy here's putting actual effort into this, so stay out of his way." Yes, that was what passed as an actual compliment from Bakugo. Totsuka, who like the rest of us was slowly growing used to Bakugo's foul mouth, even managed to look faintly cheered by the statement despite Bakugo's awful taste in nicknames. Our uninvited guests, on the other hand, looked mildly appalled.

"Now, now," Hayama said, effortlessly taking control of the situation like the good-looking riajuu bastard he was, "I'm sure Denki-kun didn't mean to insult how hard everybody's been working. Why don't we let Totsuka-san decide what he'd like to do? How about it?" he asked, turning to Totsuka directly, "want a few extra people to practice against, and we can all train together? I think Ōoka and Yamato are your classmates, aren't they?"

Ugh. Hayama played dirty. Now that he'd pointed that out explicitly, if Totsuka rejected them, he'd risk becoming a pariah in his own class. Predictably, when Totsuka replied it was with a bit of a stammer. "Well… um… actually I think I'd prefer to - "

"Huh? Speak up! I can't hear you!" Miura interrupted, ruining Totsuka's momentum.

"Oi," I said, butting in before Totsuka could cave to peer pressure, "isn't it a little hypocritical to put Totsuka on the spot like that? Nobody comes to U.A. hating the idea of being a hero," with myself perhaps the notable exception, "so trying to make him choose between helping others and doing what's in his own best interest… don't you think that's kind of a cheap shot? Especially when he's already putting in all this effort for other people, just not necessarily ones that are standing right here in front of him, looking disappointed?" Hmph. Don't even think about trying dirty tactics against a dirty bastard like me. No matter how low you sink, I can always go lower!

"Then, how about this?" Hayama asked, adopting a cocky grin. "If we can prove we're good enough at tennis that we wouldn't be holding Totsuka-san back, then there's no problem, right?"

Going to take by force what you can't take by persuasion, huh? Still, the four of us have been working on tennis pretty aggressively for the past few days, so it's not like we're exactly easy targets. On the other hand - "Heh heh heh heh. Now that's what I'm talking about! Get on the court, airhead, and I'll show you what you're messing with." Ooor, Bakugo could just accept for all of us, but whatever, it's fine. They can't be that much better than us, can they?

As it turned out, they could. Or rather, Miura could. Once we had accepted Hayama's challenge, she promptly proposed a mixed doubles match, which since Yukinoshita was still gone meant that we were relying on Bakugo and Yuigahama. Honestly, Bakugo might have been fine if he had been going up against either Hayama or Miura on his own, and Yuigahama might have been able to at least stall for time by herself, but neither of them had any experience with sharing a court, and Miura spotted that right away. Ball after ball was aimed precisely for the weak point between the two of them, usually resulting in either Bakugo going for balls that he shouldn't have and being drawn out of position, or Yuigahama not going for balls that she should have for fear of getting in Bakugo's way. When it was our turn to serve, Bakugo's explosive aerial serves were enough to get us a game or two, but Yuigahama's services were generally… well, let's just say less helpful.

By the time that Yukinoshita returned, holding a medical box, we were down 5 games to 2. As she walked across the court, she drew everybody's attention, finally coming to a stop by Totsuka, who was by this point sitting up in the referee's chair. "Here," Yukinoshita said, handing Totsuka the supplies. "Sorry it took so long, the fields here are quite large and it took me some time to get to the supply station without using my quirk."

"Don't worry about it," he replied, smiling innocently at Yukinoshita. "Thanks for your help!"

"So? What's the situation?" Yukinoshita asked me, taking a spot by my side.

"Mm, well, Hayama's group wants to share the courts with us, despite the fact that they'd get in our way, so they challenged us to a game for the right to join us. Right now, they're about to win."

Yukinoshita looked at me sharply. "And why haven't you subbed in for Bakugo, yet?" she said sharply. "I doubt we'd be this far behind if you were playing."

I shrugged. "Mostly, I was just planning on getting on my knees and begging them if they won. It'd be super awkward and unpleasant, so they'd probably leave."

"... What?" Yukinoshita boggled, seemingly perplexed, "why would you even do that?"

I gave her a rotten smirk. "A hero is someone willing to sacrifice anything to protect the innocent, even their dignity, right?"

She just stared at me flatly. "No."

"No?" I asked.

"No, we're not doing that." Turning to the other team, Yukinoshita raised her voice. "It's alright if we do a team change now, right?"

Miura shrugged. "Yeah, as long as the score's still the same. Kaminari, Jiro, either of you guys want to sub in?"

Jiro unplugged her ear from her MP13 player. "Nah, I'm good," she said, clearly disinterested. "Denki, you want to have a go?" He shrugged, similarly content to let Hayama and Miura battle it out with us.

Predictably, Bakugo groused about being subbed out. "The hell are you counting me out for? I'm doing fine, it's Yuigahama that keeps screwing me up!"

Briefly, I debated making a point of telling him the truth and setting the record straight, but it was too much effort, so I just shrugged. "They aren't switching, so if we do, it's a cheap tactical advantage. You've gotten them nice and used to power shots, so now I can switch to slices and mess them up. It's just good strategy."

His ego assuaged, Bakugo tossed me the racket. "Tche. Whatever, Hikigaya. Don't screw it up."

"Yeah, yeah. I already knew that without you telling me." With Yukinoshita and I at the fore, things got a little easier. Our cooperation with each other wasn't exactly flawless, but both of us were athletic enough to cover over the gaps, and Yukinoshita's agility in particular made her an excellent back-row defender. Also, even though Bakugo and Yuigahama had lost us quite a bit of ground, they'd managed to tire out Hayama and Miura so that they were less than fresh. Slowly but surely, the score ticked up from 5-6, to 7-7, to 9-8. As I was getting ready to serve the potentially last ball, I served up a pop fly, a high ball that would in theory give someone enough time to send it up, run to the other side of the court to receive it, and potentially return it. A loner's ball, for somebody who didn't have any friends.

Predictably, faced with a high ball like that, Hayama did what came naturally. He squatted, and then jumped up, racket in hand, soaring up into the sky to receive it properly - only to jerk away at the last second, snapping his racket out of the way as he remembered that this was supposed to be a quirkless competition. The joke was on him - I had been using Death Arms to imperceptibly boost my serves by 20% ever since we started! Yeah, it was a little bit cheaty, but so was including Miura when her quirk gave her an innate understanding of trajectories, even when she wasn't throwing light arrows around, and it wasn't like anybody would catch me. "Nice serve," Hayama said to me as he landed, looking a little frustrated. "That was a tricky one to receive. A bet's a bet, so we'll leave the court to you."

I nodded and smiled at him, then quickly jogged over to Totsuka. "Hey. You're recruiting for the Tennis Club, right? Are you going to let them go, just like that?"

Totsuka's eyes widened in realization, and swiftly he limped over to Hayama's team as they were all packing up and getting ready to leave. "Uhm, excuse me?" Totsuka said, his blue eyes sparkling as he ran up with his skinned knees hastily bandaged. "Um, if tennis practice would really be helpful to you guys for the Sports Festival, then - won't you please join the Tennis Club? I'm only doing all this to get strong so I can get new members for the club, and you guys seem pretty nice…"

As Totsuka laid on the androgynous charm and successfully managed to garner two new recruits for the Tennis Club, Yukinoshita stepped up next to me. "An elegant solution. So? Why did you wait until we had already gone through all the trouble of winning a match against them to think of it, instead of suggesting it from the start?"

I sighed. "Everybody likes having an adversary to outsmart. Being offered victory out of the jaws of defeat, letting them see it as a favor that Totsuka gave them rather than something they were owed initially, it makes it more likely that they'll give in to his terms and his leadership later."

"I see." Yukinoshita said with a slightly disapproving tone in her voice. "And the being ready to grovel before them? Was that also part of the plan?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "Hey, whatever works, right?"

Yukinoshita just stared at me for a second before turning away, moving to congratulate Totsuka on his new club members and to coordinate the shared practice between teams D and E.

Honestly. Some days, I just really didn't understand girls at all.


	8. Despite Appearances, Eraserhead pt1

**A/N: Once again, if you read the last chapter immediately after it came out, I did wind up making slight edits; this time they took the form of some additions to the banter in the Service Club room to better match Bakugo's personality. Also, I'm proud to announce that I have officially finished NaNoWriMo for the first time! Thank you everyone for all of the reviews, revisions, thought-provoking questions, art, and everything else that you've given in response to my work. It really is the fuel that keeps my creative engines running. I do plan to keep this story going, but updates may get slower as I start having to pay more attention to things like 'Grad School' and 'Real Life'. Without futher ado, here's the chapter!**

My homeroom teacher - Eraserhead - was a sort of person called an 'Underground Hero', a variant of the stereotypically fame-obsessed existence known as the 'Pro Hero' notable for choosing to operate in relative anonymity. In other words, you could call him a sort of hipster, the sort of person who only thinks certain things are cool when nobody else has heard of them or done them. Aizawa was so 'underground' and 'unique' that he came to work in a freaking sleeping bag, because resting whenever possible was more 'efficient' than actually being presentable. For all of his talk about 'not wasting a single day' to get us ready to be heroes? I'm pretty sure that we only skipped student orientation because attending it would have been too mainstream. (Alternately, it was possible that he was just lazy, and that finding pro heroes willing to work at a high school was too much trouble for the administration to bother replacing him, so he did it because he knew he could get away with it.)

Normally, I was the sort of person who wouldn't be caught dead affecting such an unnatural posture of indifference. If I liked something unpopular, it's because I was an unpopular person, and I was okay with that. Maintaining a rebellion against the status quo seemed like a lot of work, so naturally it was something that held no attraction to me. On the other hand, if the alternative to being a hipster was dealing with the media everyday, then I was starting to see the appeal of Aizawa-sensei's approach to things.

Ever since All Might had announced that he was going to be teaching at U.A., day after day, the crowds of media hanging about near the entrance had only grown. Not that I blamed them; it seemed like everybody and their dog wanted to know just what the strongest man in Japan was doing taking up a teaching position. U.A.'s official press releases stated that this was just an offer that All Might had been looking forward to taking for a while, but the unofficial rumor mills were full of wild theories ranging from a villain ring in Musutafu, to All Might having health issues and losing his power, to a secret engagement between All Might and Midnight. A few even correctly guessed the 'forbidden love child' angle, but so far Midoriya's secret was still safe - the number one candidate for their 'love child' theories was some American blonde over in 1-B named Tsunotori. In any case, All Might was avoiding the cameras for some reason, so the media was forced to try to get some information from other available sources - such as the students.

Naturally, as bad as the media's speculation had gotten, the student body was ten times worse. I had personally heard half-baked theories ranging from 'All Might is secretly an alien from another planet' to 'All Might is a scientifically created super-soldier, and U.A. has the formula' to 'Aizawa-sensei's Quirk Nullification abilities are the only thing able to turn off All Might's quirk for long enough that he can achieve sexual release'.

"Excuse me! Are you part of U.A.'s hero course?" Just keep walking, pretend they're talking to somebody else. "Young man! Young man!" All right, if they're going to step out in front of me, I can't exactly pretend, so I guess I'll have to answer.

I did my best to stifle a yawn. "Do you mind? I don't want to be late," I said dully, not slowing down in the slightest. I gave the woman the choice of either getting out of the wheel of my bike as I walked it into the school gate or getting run over, and unsurprisingly, she decided to move.

"Is All Might a stickler for punctuality?" She called out after me.

I just shrugged, letting her talk to my back as I walked through the door. "I dunno," I said, "I haven't been late to his class yet to find out."

"Young man, you were a survivor from the Tatooin incident last year, weren't you? Any comments about studying under the man who saved you?" For a second, my heart dropped into my stomach. I whirled around to explain to her that she had the wrong person - and saw that she was currently looking at Bakugo, who in turn was ignoring her completely. I didn't know whether to be relieved that she hadn't recognized me from the same incident or annoyed. On the other hand, if she had recognized me, some reporter probably would have showed up at my house by now, and I would have probably had to bribe Komachi with ice cream to keep her from 'accidentally' spilling my embarrassing personal secrets during an interview, so for the sake of my wallet I'd go with relief for the moment.

The media harassment had gotten so bad that the administration had taken to raising the anti-villain defense walls around the campus as soon as classes officially started for the day in order to keep the press from sneaking onto the grounds or trying to record classes through the windows. From the inside, it kind of gave the feeling of being in a castle under siege. Luckily, the media didn't appear to have any trebuchets, so as long as we could keep them from tossing dead bodies full of plague into our courtyard, we'd probably be fine.

Far more concerning than the media threat was the threat of homeroom with Aizawa-sensei. He had a nasty tendency to do things that would catch us off guard - handing out pop quizzes on materials that other teachers had taught, 'training our situational awareness' by asking us how many reporters had been at the front door in the morning and what they had been wearing, cancelling homeroom to lead us all in quirkless calisthenics because he felt like our other classes weren't getting us enough exercise, and so on - about half the time, anyway. The other half of the time, he just gave us something easy and pointless to do while he took a nap. Those first few minutes of homeroom before he showed up and told us whether we were going to be relaxed or scrambling about in a panic were always just a little tense. I didn't blame him; if I were a teacher, I would have set up some kind of system that let me take naps myself, but from the student perspective it generally made our mornings a little anxious.

For once, though, I was too tired to worry. I put my head down on my desk as I waited for class to start, enjoying the extra few minutes of shut-eye before I had to actually sit up and pay attention. Despite my borrowed sleep efficiency quirk, hours and hours of stockpiling quirks every night in the hopes of being ready for the next day's classwork was beginning to take its toll on me. It wasn't just that the hero class activities were tiring, which they were; there was also the fact that I had been diligently finding ways to copy the quirks of nearly everyone in my class, more than a few of the teachers, and even a few students from other classes that I could brush past in the halls. While this had obvious benefits, there were drawbacks as well. Instead of having maybe half a dozen pro-level quirks worth stockpiling, I had more like twenty or thirty, all of which needed to be practiced with and experimented with if they were going to be useful. So I did my best to ignore everyone else in the room until I heard the telltale noise of Aizawa-sensei clearing his throat.

"Settle down." Almost instantly, the room quieted down. I picked my head up to look at Aizawa, who thankfully was still half in his sleeping bag and holding a pile of papers. Good, probably not an active day then. "Before we get to today's activities," Or, maybe he's just not ready yet. Crap. "I've got the first week's results from your Hero Service projects." Ugh. The fact that he was giving them to us instead of Midnight-sensei doing it meant that we were probably going to be doing something _strenuous_ later. "Group A," Aizawa continued, "You had a short deadline for this one, so you're actually finished with your first assignment. Well, you did alright, but some of you need to learn the difference between 'Plus Ultra' and just plain overdoing things." Curious, I looked around the room to see who had… ah. Midoriya's group, that made sense. Surprisingly, he, Uraraka, and Yaoyorozu all looked a little embarrassed, so maybe it wasn't just him? The only one who didn't look sheepish was Tokoyami, and it was possible that I just couldn't see the blush through his feathers.

"Group B," Aizawa said after he had passed down the feedback forms, moving on. I saw Todoroki straighten up, as well as Tobe, Mezo, and Hagakure - well, her clothes did, anyways. "Your client is a little bit unreasonable. Good job setting reasonable limits and refusing her more inappropriate requests, but it seems like you need more practice at rejecting people politely." My, the blushes were practically contagious there. How interesting. I would have to find out just what job they had gotten, especially if it meant that I could get some reciprocal blackmail on Mezo-san. As I considered the problem of how to acquire said information without asking straightforwardly like a novice at being lied to, Aizawa kept going. "Group C, I think you're finding that working with support companies - or a support student, as the case may be - can be tricky, especially when it comes to giving them requirements in the format they ask for. You did okay for students that haven't been trained for it yet, but there's room to improve. Make sure to pay extra attention to where you made mistakes when you get to Cementoss's lessons on the subject." Looking quite chagrined, Iida nodded determinedly, as did Kirishima, Ashido, and Asui.

Aizawa's gaze turned towards me, and I couldn't help but swallow nervously. Dammit, why did he have to announce results like this in front of the class? Okay, I knew why, it was a 'logical decision' to put pressure on us to work harder, but still! "Group D," he said ominously. "Your student reporter gave you very high marks, but don't get cocky. That just means they were too 'nice' to give you information on where you could stand to improve." Yeah, that sounded about right. Totsuka was a complete sweetheart, the sort of deredere girl who the protagonist should just give up all the other love interests for if he weren't a weak-willed idiot - wait, something wasn't right there! In any case, Totsuka not giving us criticism was unavoidable. Sure enough, the paperwork we got back was full of compliments and smiley faces, even in areas that we should have bombed in (like 'professional comportment' for Bakugo or 'heroic attitude' for me.) Aizawa's final advice for us was to "make sure your self-critique is more effective than the critique you received was." Hah, easy enough - self-criticism was practically my best skill!

"Team E, it seems like your students thought some of you contributed more than others. Those of you dominating the group, make sure to listen to your teammates and don't just talk over them. Those of you falling behind? Step up to the plate and don't just go with the flow. And if you're thinking right now that the culprit had to have been somebody else, then it was probably you, so cultivate some self-awareness." Having seen team E in action, that sounded about right - Kaminari and Jiro had been sort of like bystanders compared to the Riajuu Duo. Now that Aizawa was done motivating us, it was time for the moment of truth. Were we going to get the sadist, or the lazy bum? "Now that that's done…" Aizawa said, leaving us all on tenterhooks as he paused for dramatic effect, "today, you'll be picking a class president," the majority of the class let out a deep sigh of relief. And then pretty much everybody else in class all started shouting at once, while I put my head down on my desk to see if I could catch a few extra minutes of shut-eye. I didn't really care who got the honor of signing themselves up for a bunch of pointless busywork, as long as it wasn't me.

Predictably, Iida's voice was the first to make itself heard over the hubbub. "Quiet down, everyone!" Please do, I'm trying to take a nap here. "Leading the many is a task of heavy responsibility, but the ambition to take on that responsibility does not necessarily imply that one has the capability to discharge that responsibility effectively! This sacred office is too precious to be dealt with in a cavalier fashion! I hereby motion that our true leader be chosen by election!" I used to think that Iida was trying to be overly pompous in order to impress people, but slowly and with dawning horror, I was coming to realize that he was just like that _all the time_. That settled it. If it looked like he was going to be made class president, I was going to have to do something drastic to stop it. It was for his own good!

The rest of the class seemed to realize that something was off with Iida too, because there was stunned silence for a second, a conversational vacuum that our resident riajuu Hayama immediately rushed to fill. "Mmm, that's not a bad idea," Hayama said affably, "why don't we have everybody who wants to be president stand up and say a few words about why they think they'd be good at the job?"

"Whatever," Aizawa said, echoing my opinions on the matter. "Just make it quick."

"Yes, sensei," Hayama said, "in that case, I'll go first to set the example?" Nobody gainsaid him, so he took a deep breath and put on a bright smile. "I think I should be class president because I'm good at getting along with people, and because my quirk lets me fly up high to see the big picture, would make me a good candidate to lead us as a hero team."

After a pause, Aizawa didn't object, so Hayama sat back down and Iida stood up. "I think I should be class president because of my diligence and my respect for the position!" Then came Kirishima. "If I'm elected class president, I'll go at it with guts!" And so on.

"U-um, I d-don't know if I have much experience being a leader yet, but it's always been my dream, so I'd like to try!" Midoriya. Man, for the kid of somebody super famous, he sure is shy.

"Just because I've rejected the darkness in my heart doesn't mean that I don't understand the darkness in the hearts of villains. I believe that I am exceptionally well suited lead us in battle against the criminal element." … wow, he's way too serious about this too, but in a completely different way from Iida!

"A job like class president requires a keen attention to detail and attention to paperwork, which are both qualities that I am very confident in." Yaoyorozu. She was clearly the best choice in my opinion, which of course meant that she was probably going to get screwed over by the fact that these things were always just popularity contests.

"I should be president because I won't accept doing anything less than the best job I can do." Bakugo, with a surprising lack of expletives. Guess all that practice with Totsuka was good for something after all.

"Oh, jeez, aaah, everybody's responses are so cool! Um, well, I think I should be president because it sounds super fun, and someone who enjoys their work is always a good choice for the job, right?" Sit down, Ashido. Work isn't fun, that's why they call it work.

"Hey, with me around paperwork just files itself! Haha, only sort of, I wish, that was a joke, but still, my quirk makes me great at handling stuff like this, so leave it to me!" Ugh. No. Having someone nominally in charge of me who won't shut up is bad enough when they're an adult. After Tobe came Asui, Kaminari, Miura, Hagakure, and Mezo; honestly, those of us who weren't in the running were clearly in the minority. Finally, when Mezo finished delivering his statement about his ability to multitask from the end of one of his tentacle mouths, nobody else stood up.

"Well then, should we take the vote?" Hayama asked, effortlessly re-dominating the flow of the classroom as if he were already in charge.

Suddenly, Yuigahama stood up. Oi, if you're going to give a speech, you shouldn't make people wait! Seriously, you had like fifteen speeches to figure it ou- "No wait, Hikki hasn't gone yet!" What.

My head snapped up to see an uncomfortable number of people looking at me with faces full of expectation. Before I could say anything, Midoriya chimed in with a "Even though I still wanted to try for myself, Hikigaya-san would be really good at it, wouldn't he," the little bastard. (Technically that was probably literally true, so to be clear, I meant it figuratively.)

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I blurted out before anybody else could attempt to damn me with effusive praise, "I don't want to be class president!" The looks that everybody gave me were a mix of incomprehension and disappointment, which was really uncomfortable, so I quickly looked to the side and thought up an excuse. "... I'm too busy," I said eventually. "I wouldn't have time." It was even mostly true! I had quirks to stock, time to spend with my little sister, homework to do, television to watch, books to read - not that I'd done much of either of the last two over the past two weeks, but still, it was the principle of the matter. I was already running myself ragged trying to keep up with U.A., so why would I volunteer for even more work?

"Oh," Yuigahama said with disappointment, sitting back down. "That's too bad." The amount of murmured assent that she got in response to that statement was creepy. Oi, you don't all have to be so nice! It's a terrible idea, don't try and console her that it didn't work out!

"Hikigaya." Suddenly, Aizawa spoke up, interfering in the election for the first time. "Your quirk gives you low stamina."

I shrugged. "Yeah, so?" Technically it was a lie (as were most things that I said about myself these days) since I had nearly infinite stamina as long as I was using my quirk 'properly', but the way that I had sold my quirk was that pushing a single skill past its base level tired that quirk out, so in effect it was more or less true.

Aizawa glowered at me from his sleeping bag. "So most pro heroes spend their days on the street, using their quirks fairly consistently, and don't necessarily have any idea what they're doing behind a desk. You've got an opportunity at a training opportunity for a leadership position that would keep you from having to ration your quirk use. Consider reprioritizing."

Ah. Even after years of being reminded that my quirk was nearly useless, hearing it for the hundred thousandth time still stung. Maybe it was because I was hearing it from someone whose job it was to judge these sorts of things, instead of some random jerk in class. Still, he did have a point. Not the point that he thought he was making, but a point. Hadn't I wanted to get a comfy desk job from the beginning? And although a leadership position was 'a lot of responsibility' or whatever, looked at another way, wasn't it an opportunity for me to find ways to push off my work onto other people? And how hard could being class president be, if Aizawa was recommending me for the position? He was too lazy to encourage somebody like me if there was any chance that me screwing it up would actually cause him problems, so it had to be the sort of thing that any moron capable of winning a popularity contest could do. And so, despite my better instinct, I gave in. "...Fine," I said eventually.

Delighted, Yuigahama beamed at me. "Okay! Haha! Hikki, give us your speech!"

Aaaagh, why did I agree to it! Shit, what do I say! Quick, think of something witty! No, no good. Think of something socially acceptable? No, can't do that either. Borrow a trite phrase from my dad? … It was the best I had, so it would have to do. "Well, you know what they say," I began, a slightly sarcastic smile appearing on my face, "if you want something done well, give it to somebody who's already busy. If other people are already asking a lot from them, there's probably a reason," such as the fact that they're probably too much of a pushover to say no, but I maybe won't include that last little bit regardless of how appropriate it feels at the moment. Well, it was a lame speech, but at least I didn't embarrass myself, and it wasn't like I had a lot invested in winning the president position. In fact, losing the election might even be preferable, Aizawa-sensei's points aside. I mean, even if being the student council president would be better for me personally, shouldn't it go to someone who actually deserved the position and wanted it?

According to my classmates, apparently not. Of the six people who didn't vote for themselves - Iida, Yuigahama, Todoroki, Uraraka, Kirishima, and Yukinoshita - four of them voted for me, one voted for Yaoyorozu, and one voted for Midoriya. That, or someone in that group voted for someone else who didn't vote for themselves, who then voted for one of the three of us; in the end, the result was that I had four votes, Yaoyorozu had three, one of which was mine, and Midoriya was in third place with two votes. Which made me the Class President. Fuck. Yaoyorozu and I went up to the front of the class, received a brief moment of cursory applause, and then we sat back down. Hooray for us. As we got back to our seats, Yaoyorozu leaned forward from the seat behind me. "I look forward to working with you, President Hikigaya," she said with a smile.

"Brrrr. Don't say that, it'll give me shivers." I replied, clutching my shoulders in only half-faked fright. "... But yeah. Glad to be working with you." I sighed. I raised my eyebrow at her. "Shouldn't you be, you know, angrier that you didn't get first? Objectively speaking, you're the better choice between the two of us."

Yaoyorozu blinked. "Hikigaya-san, were you perhaps… one of the people who voted for me?" When I nodded in confirmation, she surprisingly sagged slightly in her chair. "As I suspected…" she muttered. Oi, why does that make you depressed!? Aizawa was getting ready to start whatever lecture he had in mind for the remainder of homeroom, so rather than explaining in detail, Yaoyorozu just smiled at me and said, "No, Hikigaya, I think I'm pretty happy right where I am."

As expected of Yaoyorozu. Even talking in plain Japanese, she still somehow managed to be completely incomprehensible.

One of the biggest benefits to studying at U.A. was the cafeteria. Not only was the food delicious, but the quirks were delicious as well. Between the lunch lines, the crowded hallways, and the tables that encouraged sitting in large groups, it was very easy for me to 'accidentally' bump, nudge, or brush against other people in order to see what quirks they had and potentially to copy their tasty, tasty, pro-level quirks. It was almost enough to make up for the bad taste that winning the election had left in my mouth. Some days I made a game of it, trying to figure out whether someone was in the hero, business, support, or general courses just by their quirks alone.

A quirk that causes teeth to shine with brilliant light… probably called 'Megawatt Smile'? Almost certainly business.

What about you, skull-face guy? Hmm, you can give things you touch the consistency of quicksand? Let's go with hero, and I'm keeping that quirk to play with later.

Microscopic vision, with oil stains all over her face and uniform? Support.

The ability to pass through solid objects? General or hero, but since he's built like a brick house let's go with hero, even if I'm probably not going to keep my copy of his quirk, given that I like not having my clothes fall right through me.

Disguise yourself perfectly as someone else, as long as you ingest enough of their blood? Eww. Nope, getting rid of that quirk as soon as possible. Looking at the guy, he seemed perfectly ordinary, possibly even like I had seen him somewhere before, which I suppose just went to show that you couldn't judge a book by its cover. On the other hand, his body language seemed a little off - or maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. I'm pretty sure U.A. isn't going to let its students go around drinking each other's blood just so they can use their quirks a little. The disease risk alone! Yeah, his's definitely just a no-keep quirk in general, let's replace his quirk with... hers.

Size changing, huh? Not as powerful as Gigantify, but bidirectional, so it'd be a good combo with Gigantify to adjust things a little in either direction. Sure, why not, I'll keep it for now. She's probably a hero.

By the time I left the lunch line, I had picked up two new pro-level quirks, and one or two more that might be situationally useful; as far as I was concerned, after I had struggled with the fact that I had only six to eight in total for nearly ten months, that was by no means a bad thing. Of course, that just left me with a follow-up question, namely, where the heck should I sit? In middle school I would just take my lunch and eat outside alone, but the U.A. campus was a lot less convenient for that, and with the school defense walls up there was no breeze to be enjoyed anyways. Once or twice I had eaten with my service group so that Bakugo could lecture Totsuka about protein, but that had been a one-time thing and I didn't really feel like listening to Bakugo shout about not getting the president spot. Maybe…

"Ah! Hikigaya-kun!" I turned to see a vision of loveliness, short white hair and sparkling blue eyes over a smiling face, holding a plate loaded with chicken, rice, and beans. "Do you want to sit together for lunch?" Ah, it was like the springtime of my youth was beginning! If only it weren't an illusion! Still, sitting with some General Education students seemed like it'd be better for my sanity than listening to fake congratulations from my class, so I nodded. "Sure, that sounds fine."

Naturally, of course, Totsuka then led me over to a table where Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, Bakugo, and Yaoyorozu were already sitting, after it was too late for me to escape. Maybe I could eat quickly and excuse myself to the bathroom? "Yo," I mumbled as I took a seat.

"Yahello, Hikki!" Yuigahama chirped, "I saw Sai-chan and Aizawa-sensei talked about his report today so I invited him to eat with us!"

Sai-chan? I raised an eyebrow. "Oi, Yuigahama, I know you like nicknames, but don't be rude," I scolded her.

"Nnnn," Totosuka hummed, "It's okay, I don't mind. Actually, I've been meaning to ask…" I turned to look at him, and he squirmed shyly. "Would you… be alright if I called you Hachiman? And you can call me Saika?" He looked up at me imploringly through long, delicate eyelashes, his hands clasped in front of his chest. "I don't like being so formal…"

Don't blush don't blush why am I blushing! "Ah," I said, quickly taking a bite of my food to hide my discomfort, "sure, I guess."

"Thanks, Hachiman!" he said, smiling so sweetly that it almost looked like he should have a special effects halo of sparkles and rainbows in the background.

"A-ah," I said shakily. "Don't mention it... S-saika." By the end of my sentence, I was practically mumbling.

"Hah! What's with that?" Bakugo smirked, noisily butting in. "Do you just not know how call people by their first names or something?"

"Shut up, 'Kacchan'," I retorted sarcastically. So what if I was never close enough to anyone to call them by their first name before? I didn't need to hear that from him!

"Oi, you call me that shit again and I'm gonna kick your ass!" Katsuki growled.

"Ha ha ha aaaanyway can you believe that Aizawa-sensei? He didn't believe we did a good job at all!" Yuigahama said, desperately trying to change the subject before the two of us started bickering again.

Yukinoshita nodded. "To be fair, the idea of a group of new students performing flawlessly the first time is an unusual one," she said, "and it isn't as though we have prior successes for him to be able to evaluate a trend."

"If Totsuka-san hadn't defended his review of you all so vigorously, I might not have believed it either," Yaoyorozu agreed.

"Mou, Yukinon, Yaomomo, don't take Aizawa-sensei's side! We're totally awesome, and he should recognize that instead of being all 'recognize your own faults' like it was impossible for us to do good!" Yuigahama turned to me, asking "right Hikki?"

"Wrong," I said, rolling my eyes at her. "I mean for starters, just because we know Bakugo knows how to be polite when he gets serious doesn't mean that literally anybody else knows."

"Oi, screw you. I ain't _that_ bad." Bakugo retorted, completely proving my point.

"And if Totsuka couldn't handle brutal honesty," I continued, my gaze tracking to Yukinoshita, "then at least half of Yukinoshita's 'encouragements' would have come across as incredibly offensive."

"Actually, Hikigaya, I think you'll find that my words are only offensive to offensive people." I raised one eyebrow, as if to say 'see?'.

"And then there's me, who… well..." just coming out and saying that I have no friends would come across as a bit desperate, which isn't what I mean at all, but surely it's obvious that -

"Oh, that reminds me," Yukinoshita cuts in. "Yaoyorozu-san, I invited you over to our table for lunch to let you know that if Hikigaya sexually harasses you in any way or tries to abuse his position as class president over you, let us know. We'll believe you."

I gave Yukinoshita a flat glare. "Oi, that joke gets less funny every time you tell it." Despite the fact that I said so, she was smiling smugly at me, and Yuigahama had put a hand up to her mouth in amusement.

For her part, Yaoyorozu looked between Yukinoshita and I, probably to make sure that Yukinoshita was in fact joking, before adopting a smug expression of her own. "I can take care of myself," Yaoyorozu reassured Yukinoshita, "you'd be surprised to know how useful the ability to extrude sharp objects from anywhere on my skin can be."

"Ugh." Outnumbered, I hung my head in defeat. Why had I sat here again?

"Oh, Hachiman-kun was elected as the class president? That's great!" I looked over at the pair of sparkling blue eyes and the wide smile to my left. Oh right, that's why. Because Totsuka, I mean, Saika is dangerously pretty. I quickly looked away, only for something else to catch my attention - I saw the ordinary-looking kid with the super creepy quirk stand up and excuse himself from the table before his lunch was finished. I hoped he wasn't being bullied or anything; I could see him pulling out his phone and putting it to his ear as though he had received a phone call, but I had personally used the same excuse to escape an uncomfortable situation more than once in the past, and he was walking away from the table pretty quickly. Well, if he was being bullied, then hopefully he'd make a hero request or tell a teacher or something, but still, something bothered me about him.

Actually… "Hey, Totsuka. I don't suppose that kid with the phone over there is in your class, is he?" I said, gesturing with my chin in the appropriate direction.

"The one leaving?" Totsuka asked. "I think so! I think that's Iwato-san. Why?"

I did not think this through. I can't just ask if he's being bullied for his quirk, can I? What about… "Is he the sort of person to talk about his quirk?"

"Oh yeah!" Totsuka said happily. "I think he said it was called Theme Song, or something like that? He can play music whenever he wants, it's pretty cool. Was it one you copied?"

"Yes, yes it was," I said slowly. I knew something had been bugging me about him! I'd copied that quirk before, a couple of days ago! "But when I bumped into him today at lunch, he had a _disguise_ quirk instead."

Three things happened at once. 'Iwato' turned the corner, into the hallway. I stood up from my seat. And the alarms went off, all across the building.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "Level Three Security has been broken. All students, please evacuate in an orderly fashion."

I immediately broke into a run, scrambling after the vanished form of 'Iwato'. After only a few steps, I was channeling Yuki-Onna and Vulture Flight, not wanting to lose control and bounce all over the room the way that Stockpile would cause, instead just eking out a little bit of extra forward velocity with my classmates' perks in order to get to the hallway before the mass of panicked students started crowding things and muddying 'Iwato's trail.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

By the time I got to the hallway, 'Iwato' was already gone, clearly having taken a doorway - but which one? Come to think of it, did I really want to know? If they were a blood-drinking face-stealing villain, what was I going to do if I found them? I almost gave up, right then and there, but then I realized that all they had was a disguise quirk. God and Buddha help me, my first instinct was to think 'meh, I can take them.'

And so I tapped into Stockpile, and reached out to a quirk that I had stockpiled on a whim after a few of our teachers had started discussing civilian rescue operations. I was instantly glad that I was in front of the mob about to rush past me, because my nose suddenly melted and shifted into a significantly more doglike shape than it took on when I used the non-Stockpiled version of Bloodhound Nose. I inhaled through my newly transformed nose, and it was like the air took on _color_ , thousands of sensations and flavors all hitting my brain at once; despite the fact that I had next to no practice with scent quirks, the smell I was looking for wasn't exactly a hard one to distinguish, and sure enough I found it - the faint scent of dried blood.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

Still keeping Stockpile on, I darted forward to follow the scent, following it into a stairwell as it led up, away from the ground floor and the evacuation routes that we were supposed to be taking. I had worried a little bit that I had accidentally tracked an old scent trail of Vlad King's, but hearing a door several floors above me swing closed eliminated those concerns. I took the staircase up four stairs at a time, bounding up the stairway with superhuman speed. I was able to follow the scent to the fourth floor before my stockpile of Bloodhound Nose gave up the ghost, my nose contorting back to a more normal shape.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

I threw the door open, having reached an unfamiliar floor. This space seemed to have been set aside for teachers' offices and specialized classrooms, somewhere I'd had no reason to come to until now. I dropped Stockpile for the moment, grabbing a pair of visual enhancement quirks that I had previously only ever used for perfectly normal and inoffensive purposes, but which I was now turning toward finding a clue, something, anything out of place.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

Nothing down the left side of the corridor.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

Halfway down the right side of the hallway, there was a door hanging ever so slightly ajar. Bingo. I turned Stockpile back on, and started pondering what second quirk to use once I caught them. Maybe I could use Yaoyorozu's Creation to make handcuffs or something? Or Yuigahama's Cloth Armor, sew their clothes together? I hadn't really practiced with telekinetic sewing or creating complicated items, though. Hmm. Maybe I should just knock them out?

I burst through the door of the open room, and immediately saw 'Iwato', who was standing in front of a computer workstation, one hand pressed to the ear, still holding the cellular phone. "Aha!" I shouted, "Stand down, 'Iwato', or ukh-"

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

'Iwato' had waved their free arm at me in a movement I hadn't recognized. For a second, I thought I had been punched, right in the chest, so hard that it had knocked the breath out of me. I looked down, and there was a knife sticking out of my U.A. uniform, red blood quickly staining the grey jacket around the impact location. I looked back at 'Iwato' in confusion, then back down at my chest, one hand slowly trying to reach up to touch the knife. As I tried to move my arm, the pain belatedly made its way through the adrenaline.

"ahhhhhhhh"  
VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

I wanted to scream in pain, fell down to my knees it was so intense, but all that would come out was a strangled whisper and a taste of blood in the back of my mouth, and then a searing pain deeper in my chest to go with the stab wound as my lungs started filling with something hot and liquid. I dropped down to my hands and knees, coughing blood out of my lungs as I frantically tried to draw a breath, my vision starting to go grey around the edges. Even through the pain, though, I could hear 'Iwato' talking on the phone, his voice slowly drifting upwards in register, becoming more feminine.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "Hmm? Ah, just some dumb kid. A friend of Ayebeeneg's, maybe? I didn't see him in class this morning but he knew the skinbag's name, so whatever. VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "Nah, no trouble, he was alone, and he was a bleeder." VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!" "Like, ohmigod, you are _such_ a nag. Of course I'm gonna wipe the computer so they don't know what I took, really?" VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "No, you're telling me how to do my job while I'm doing you a favor, and it's like, _so_ rude." VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "Hikki!" "Ah, crap."

The familiar exclamation drew me back from the grey edge of consciousness, enough for me to open eyes that I hadn't realized that I'd closed and to look up from where I had fallen sideways on the floor. VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! Hazily, as if down a far-off tunnel, I saw a girl orange hair in a side-bow kneeling in front of me as a few other people rushed past her into the room, explosions and snowflakes following them in a kaleidoscopic display. They were all sideways and stuff, though, so that was a little weird. I smiled a little bit, because I couldn't laugh for some reason. "Hikki, you need to heal! Come on Hikki! I know you can do it, you did it when you saved my dog!"

Oh, right, I had a regeneration quirk. Haha, thanks Zaimokuza. Man, I should use that, huh? Somehow, despite my confusion, I switched to his quirk. It didn't really do much, but my chest started hurting more, so I started moving my arm, slapping at my chest. Huh, there was a knife there. When did that happen? VREEE! VREEE! VREEE! "You - you need it out before you can heal?" The girl asked. It sounded right, having a knife in me sounded bad, so with great effort I managed to make my head move.

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

"O-okay." She focused, and a huge knot of clothing migrated off her arm to pack itself around the knife. She took a deep breath, and VREEE! Pulled VREEE! The knife. VREEE! Out. The pain, bright and cruel and terrible, was enough for me to have a brief moment of regained clarity; before I could pass all the way out, I somehow managed to reach out to Stockpile.

"aaaakofff"VREEE"kofffkofff"VREEE"AAAAHHHH"VREEE"AAHHHH!"

If healing a broken bone had hurt, regenerating a punctured lung and a not insignificant quantity of blood was at least ten times worse. It was enough to make me want to vomit, but I was too busy coughing blood out of my lungs and fighting for air for my stomach to get involved. I suddenly noticed that I was freezing, that the floor that I was lying on was beginning to ice over, crystals forming in the giant puddle of blood underneath me. VREE-KaBOOM! The alarm sounded off again, but all of a sudden my hearing was stolen away by a burst of heat and noise as Bakugo set off one of his trademark explosions. In the flash, I could see that one of the sleeves of his uniform was a ruby red, as soaked with blood as my whole upper torso was.

As the smoke cleared, I saw a blonde girl, half-naked, scorched and seared from Bakugo's explosions, scraps of her Iwato disguise still hanging off of her and her phone still held to her ear. "Whew! These kids are pretty tough! Gen pop boy's got hero friends!" In her free hand, a second knife shone, red along one edge with blood. "Too bad for them they're just freshmen," She gloated, licking her lips with glee. Suddenly, she noticed me. "Ooooh! Kurogiri, he's got a regeneration quirk! Ohmigosh, I always wanted a boyfriend with a regeneration quirk! I could just cut, and cut, and cut, and cut, and cut! It would be so romantic!"

VREEE! VREEE! VREEE!

I had only just now managed to take a full breath, my mouth tasted like blood and bile, but the thought of dating a crazy bitch like that gave me a shudder of revulsion strong enough that I just had to say something. "Sorry," I coughed out, "I'm too busy to write letters to prison."

"Hikigaya!" "Hikki, you're alright!" "Get the fuck up, Hikigaya, you're making us look bad!" Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, and Bakugo all made sounds of relief or what passed for it coming from them as I actually made a sound that wasn't screaming.

"Don't get distracted!" I shouted back. "She's fast!" Sure enough, in the split second flicker where my classmates had looked back at me, the half-naked 'Iwato' girl had jumped forward, slashing at Yukinoshita's face. In an enclosed area like this one, Yukinoshita couldn't draw in heat indiscriminately without affecting the rest of us, so instead she relied on subtle movements, ducking and sliding backwards with her quirk like she was skating on ice in order to get out of 'Iwato's range. Bakugo similarly couldn't use his biggest explosions with us in the room, so he rushed forward as Yukinoshita rushed back, braving the knife at close distances in order to attempt to push the villain back.

Slowly, I pushed myself to my feet, and as the need to keep putting pressure on my wound disappeared, Yuigahama let herself stand up with me and got into a battle posture herself. "Oooh, it's four against one now," the villainess said, still holding the phone to her ear. "I might actually have to stop playing around!" All of a sudden, between the squawks of the intruder alarm, I heard a 'ding!' from the computer. "Okay, Kurogiri! Program's done, so come get me!" She said into the phone, grinning at us all.

All of a sudden, black mists enveloped a corner of the room, and she jumped back into them. Bakugo aimed an explosion at them, and Yukinoshita threw a chair at the retreating form of the blonde girl, but she was swiftly shrouded by the black mist and then disappeared; soon enough followed by the mist as well. Naturally, not fifteen seconds later was when the pros finally arrived, being led by a frantic-looking and panting Yaoyorozu.

After they finished asking us questions about the villains and the break in, to say that the pros chastised us would be an understatement. Apparently, when evacuation alarm sounded, students who weren't complete idiots were supposed to _actually evacuate_ , not attempt to fight potentially _armed and dangerous villains_ despite not having any real combat training. Of course, because heroes were screwed up in the head, they somehow also managed to simultaneously sound proud of us for 'heroically' rushing into danger and for acquiring more information about the villains who had caused the security breach, but it was very much a 'good job, now don't even _think_ about doing it again until you have your provisional licenses.'

Personally, as I sat in the recovery ward hooked up to an I.V. to replace all the blood I'd lost, I was just thinking about never doing anything like that again at all.


	9. Despite Appearances, Eraserhead pt2

**A/N: My original plan was to write the story all the way through USJ before I updated, and to publish the second half of chapter 8 in one big long chapter. However, I underestimated how much time it would take to recover my inspiration after finishing my term papers, and various holiday-related distractions have interfered as well. Since I'm about to travel for the holidays, and I don't know how much time & focus I'll have over Christmas break, I decided to break chapter 8 into three parts instead of two, and to give you this second of three parts today. With my schedule, I had to release it unbetaed, so if there's anything wrong with the chapter, it's completely my fault (and let me know!)**

 **For those of you who have been asking if I'm going to continue updating this fic and doing so as anonymous or guest reviews so I can't actually respond to answer you, that's really impolite and I wish you wouldn't. Any future reviews from guest accounts only asking if I'm going to update will be deleted.**

 **Now, on with the story!**

* * *

"Generally, young man, if someone has been stabbed by a knife, it's advised that they leave the knife in so that it can be taken out carefully by experts who know how to remove it without doing even more damage than it did on its way in." Shujenzi-sensei, better known as Recovery Girl, gave me a stern glare through the built-in bifocals in her helmet visor.

"Ah. Got it." I probably should have said something like 'I'll remember that for next time', but first, I was firmly hoping that there would never be a next time, and second, I was exhausted. Who knew that being stabbed would be so tiring? Supposedly, I had already been unconscious for a few hours, but it certainly didn't feel like I had gotten any sleep. I also had a pounding headache, which Recovery Girl had said was due to the dehydration from the blood loss, but that at least was slowly getting better as the fluids from the I.V. made their way into my bloodstream. If only they made an I.V. for the other temporary deficiencies I was suffering, like common sense!

Recovery Girl sniffed in disapproval at the apparent flippancy of my reply to her. "Listen, young man. Just because that copied quirk of yours regenerates things completely is no reason to be careless. You may not have to deal with nerve damage or permanent complications from broken bones, but if you're creating new cells out of nowhere, you're running two risks. First, you're effectively starving yourself, because the materials to make those cells have to come from somewhere and your body fat percentage is already quite low." Well I'll be damned. Zaimokuza's claims that he needed to be a fatty for his quirk to work were actually true! "Second, you're likely doing telomeric damage." At my blank stare, she sighed and shook her head. "I mean you're most likely healing by effectively aging faster. I know you young bucks all think you're immortal, but trust me, you abuse that quirk too much, by the time that you get to my age - if you even make it that far - you'll regret it." Go ahead, rub the fact that I almost died in my face _again_ , please and thank you. It's really annoying, but if it helps me remember the consequences of pretending I could be a hero, then it's worth it! "And as for you, young man," Shujenji-sensei said, wheeling on Bakugo, "Nerve damage is absolutely something you have to worry about, so unless you want to lose some of the feeling and range of motion in that right hand of yours, you'll keep your arm _still_ until you've recovered enough for a second dose of my quirk, understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you," Bakugo said, mumbling something under his breath afterward that was almost certainly uncomplimentary. I couldn't help but feel a current of guilt. I didn't even really like Bakugo, but if he and the other real heroes hadn't chased after me then he wouldn't have gotten hurt. Also, I might have died. Was I secretly in U.A.'s Victim Course instead of its Hero Course? That would explain a lot.

As I sat there brooding, I was distracted from my self-pity by a buzzing sensation in my pants pocket. I pulled out my phone. Shit. Komachi sent me a text. 'Onii-chan I saw the news r u ok?' Hurriedly, I checked the news myself - 'Media Breaks In to U.A., Sparking Student Panic' was the headline. Hastily, I texted back a 'yes im fine', before looking up to Recovery Girl. "Um, Shujenji-sensei?" I asked timidly. "Can I, um, ask how much you've told my parents so far? My little sister is texting…" I trailed off. "Anyway, I don't want to worry her but I don't want to lie, either."

Recovery Girl looked at me with a pitying expression. "Well, since you're in the hero course, your medical authorizations are already on file, so I didn't have to call your parents before you were treated. With that said, you did get injured, breaking a few school rules and potentially laws in the process, so it's likely that a call will be made - but that's the principal's decision, not mine." Oh, right. There's a law against unlicensed quirk use, isn't there. Ugh. I'm going to be in _so much_ trouble. Well, look on the bright side, maybe I'll be kicked out of the hero course.

"Hmmm, my nose is twitching. Is it because I'm being spoken about? Because I'm a mouse? A dog? A bear? A mink? The answer to at least one of those questions is probably yes!" A small, furry animal wearing pants, a vest, a white collared shirt and a red tie walked into the room on its hind legs. I blinked for a second, stunned, before my dehydrated brain caught up to the fact that 'oh right, the Principal looks like some kind of animal.' "And how are your patients, Chiyo-sensei?"

"Extremely lucky," Recovery Girl said in a deadpan tone of voice. "You'll be happy to know that both should make full recoveries. As long as they _hold still_ , anyways."

"Capital! Most excellent!" Principal Nedzu proclaimed, his tail twitching slightly as though it wanted to wag. "Well, since I have a captive audience of the moment, I suppose that I should indulge myself. Young men, service to your nation is a sacred trust…" It wasn't necessarily the worst scolding I had ever received. Principal Nedzu's slightly squeaky voice never rose above a conversational volume, and he tended to be more of the 'explain what you did wrong' school of verbal rebuke than relying on insults or guilt-trips. However, it was by far the longest such personalized lecture I'd ever experienced. Principal Nedzu went over our faults in exhausting detail, drawing from historical references, literary parallels, and digressions into stories about his real-life acquaintances in order to make his points. Twenty minutes later, he finally wound down. "... and that's why we have rules about evacuations in the first place. Do you boys understand?"

"Yes Principal Nedzu. Sorry Principal Nedzu." Bakugo and I said it in shellshocked unison, as though we had been half-hypnotized by the barrage of squeakily-articulated logic.

"Your apologies are accepted. Now, on to the good news." I never would have thought that a rodent's eyes could twinkle, but somehow the Principal managed it. "First, although you boys and your compatriots absolutely made the wrong decisions due to being underinformed and undertrained - something that we as educators bear at least partial responsibility for - I, at least, am very proud of the moral fiber that you all displayed with the decisions that you did make. The courage and spirit of heroism that you and your friends displayed was laudable, and exactly in the spirit of this great institution. As long as you are able to restrict yourselves to methods of displaying that heroic spirit more appropriate to your actual levels of training and experience, I have every confidence that you'll both go far."

Was boneheaded stupidity a valuable hero trait or something? Before I knew it, I found myself shaking my head. "... I just started running," I mumbled. "Didn't even consider it might be dangerous. Bakugo, Yukinoshita, Yuigahama… they're the heroes, not me."

Bakugo snorted. "Quit it with the fake modesty, assho-" his eyes darted to the Principal, "-I mean, Hikigaya. Without you none of us would've caught that bit-, that villain in the first place."

I really wasn't being modest, but before I could figure out how to tell him that, the Principal spoke up to interrupt. "Indeed! Without the misguided efforts of you five, we might not have discovered the villains' intrusion at all. Now that we know that they have access to a disguise specialist and a teleporter, we can take the appropriate precautions!" Huh. Well, that was something, at least. "Now, as things stand, U.A. will be taking the position that the villains were in the employ of some of the muckraker journalists, attempting to illegally access confidential employee information in order to write lurid articles." I frowned for a second. Really? The sound of 'Iwato's voice was burned into my memory, and the sheer excitement she had about _cutting_ me - "Of course, this is a fiction intended to keep public panic from arising, but in the meantime it does give us the excuse to set up a restraining order against everyone who attempted illegal entry to the school yesterday. I think the student body has had enough of being harrassed on the way into school, don't you?"

Despite everything, I smiled weakly at that. "Always a silver lining, huh?"

"Now, as far as punishments go, legal or otherwise." The Principal paused for effect. Bakugo and I both got quiet, hanging on his words. "After looking at the security footage, it's quite clear that the villain attacked you first, without provocation. Any quirks used by you all were clearly used in self-defense, or would have been covered under Good Samaritan laws." I breathed out a sigh of relief. "As for _administrative_ punishments," another pause, still leaving us on tenterhooks, "Professor Aizawa will be writing a reflection essay on his failure to ensure that his students read and understood the information in the school rulebooks which would ordinarily have been covered during the orientation that you all skipped." I blinked. That had not been what I was expecting. He was blaming Aizawa-sensei, not us? "Of course, the amount of difficulty that Aizawa-sensei chooses to place upon you in retaliation for me making him do that will be entirely up to him." Aaand, there was the other shoe. But still…

"That's it?" I couldn't help but ask.

"That's it," Principal Nedzu agreed. "This is a school for heroes, Hikigaya-san. For all that I have expounded upon the ways that your actions were not appropriate given your current lack of training and inexperience, had you been a year older, with your Provisional License in hand, I have every confidence that your attempt to capture that villain would have been not only successful but highly valuable in preventing further threats and dangers to the student body. No, the punishment beyond the necessary amount to get the lesson to sink in would be counterproductive - and I think the two of you have rather gotten the point of the lesson, aha, or should I say the cut? The thrust? In any case, you've suffered enough from your mistakes already." His eyes glinted. "With that said, if you abuse this generosity and begin forming a pattern of taking inappropriate risks, I will escalate the administration's response accordingly. Is that suitably clear?" I nodded with a gulp. "Excellent! In that case, I think my work here is done."

"Wait!" I called out. "What about, um, our parents?"

"Hm?" The Principal said, his ears twitching. "Well, I informed them, of course. You are still legally minors. However, since Chiyo-sensei informed me that there was no emergency, I simply left a message."

I winced. "Do you happen to remember the number you left it at?"

*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*

"Stupid onii-chan, being _stabbed_ by a _villain_ is NOT FINE!" Later that night, the events I was dreading had come to pass. In his infinite wisdom, the Principal had left his message notifying my parents of what had occurred on my home phone, so that he wouldn't cause them undue worry while they were at work. Which meant that it was waiting for Komachi when she got home alone, leaving her to worry, fret, and build up a figurative Stockpile of righteous wrath to take out on me later.

"I was going to tell you later," I said, only slightly stretching the truth. I thought about protesting, telling her that of course I was fine, my quirk fixed me right up, but when Komachi actually got angry it was usually safest to just give in and apologize right away.

It was rare to see Komachi at any less than her best. Between the fact that her skin was more like Kevlar than like human tissue and the fact that her veins were made from carbon nanotubes, she never got baggy eyes from lack of sleep or blotchy or streaky from crying - but I could see redness at the corners of her eyes, all the same, and there were a conspicuous number of tissues in the wastebin by the couch. "Uh huh, sure you were." Komachi said suspiciously. "You idiot, what made you think that lying to me was a good idea in the first place?"

I couldn't exactly tell her that I didn't think she would find out, so instead I shrugged. "I didn't want you to worry?"

Komachi's hand balled up into a fist and she stomped on the floor, carefully restraining herself from accidentally using her Quirk-strength to hurt me but clearly wishing that she could hit me anyway. "You idiot!" she said again. "Did you ever think that maybe if you lied to me about being safe when you weren't, that I'd have to start wondering if you were really hurt every time you said you were fine?"

Ugh. Well when she put it that way… Desperately, I tried to find an excuse. "I really was fine, honest! It was just a flesh wound, I'm already all healed up. I've gotten worse in class."

Komachi scowled at me. "Is that why you decided to to take the train home? Because, you know, you whine about how tired that regeneration quirk of yours makes you _all the time_ , and yet somehow today's the first day you were so tired you couldn't ride home, despite how much 'worse' the injuries you get in class are?"

I winced. "No, it just… got late and I didn't want to ride in the dark?" It was actually late; between being interviewed by the police and the pro heroes, and all of the time I spent sitting in a hospital bed attached to an I.V., it had gotten to nearly 9 pm. Komachi didn't look like she believed me though, which was fair, because it was absolutely a lie. I was exhausted, even more so than I had been at the start of the day.

"You liar." Komachi said, her face twisting with hurt and disappointment. I opened my mouth to try to say something, to apologize, but she just turned her back to me. "Dinner's in the fridge. I'm going to bed."

"Komachi I -" SLAM! The door to her room shut behind her, hard enough to rattle the frame and set a few glasses clinking against each other in the kitchen. "-'m sorry," I finished lamely. "Well, that went well," I muttered to myself sarcastically.

*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*

The next morning, Komachi still wasn't speaking to me. My parents had come and gone at some point during the night, arriving after I had already choked down some leftovers and passed out on my bed for about ten hours straight (Recovery Girl had cautioned me that I needed natural sleep to heal, so for the first time in practically months, I had slept without using any quirks at all) but had left me a note saying that they wanted to talk to me later tonight. Which was fine. After class today, I was going to be quitting the Hero program anyways, so we'd have a lot to talk about.

Being publicly known as the guy who couldn't hack it in the Hero Class would suck, especially since it would absolutely validate Bakugo & Orimoto's conceited opinions, but if the alternative to enduring some social stigma was passing out in a pool of my own blood, then bring on the condescension. And it wasn't like staying in the hero class after getting taken down in one shot like that would be that great either - what would they call me, I wondered? Hero Name: Knifelung? Bleedygaya?

As I was musing about that and other similarly dark thoughts, the train slowed to a crawl and stopped. "Attention passengers," the intercom announced. "There is villain activity on the tracks ahead. We will resume forward motion when it is safe to proceed. Thank you for your patience." Ugh. I pulled out my phone, checking for villain-related news near Musutafu. Sure enough, some intrepid reporter was on a live broadcast, discussing the rampage of a Giant Quirk villain named Trapezius Headgear, who was currently being ineffectually opposed by Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods. I took a good, hard look at it. Was that what my life would be like, in the future? Risking getting myself killed in order to stop the 'cruel depredations' of villains who probably were teased about looking like a giant penis all through high school until they finally snapped? All to make sure that ordinary citizens' trains wouldn't get delayed?

Or maybe I would wind up like the hero in the next article down, one of three heroes dead of knife injuries in the past month alone; the article suggested that it was maybe some form of serial killer targeting heroes, but who knew? Maybe I hadn't been the only person to interrupt 'Iwato' while she was trying to do something for… what was black mist guy's name? Kurogiri, right. Because nothing's more creative than giving yourself a name written using the same kanji that could describe your quirk. Honestly, it was like something that Zaimokuza would do, the chuuni bastard. Speaking of Zaimokuza, do I owe him one for the fact that my copy of his quirk saved my life, or does he owe me for taking a bullet on the whole 'yandere villain that loves cutting her boyfriends' thing? No, I'm much better looking than he is, there's no guarantee that she would have jumped straight to 'boyfriend' thoughts if she found out that he had a regeneration quirk too. Shit, that means I owe him, doesn't it? Fine then, I thought, once I finish quitting this stupid hero program, I should look him up and see how he's doing, lend him a manga or something. I don't think I've talked to him since before everybody found out that I got into U.A., so maybe once I'm no longer officially a heroic riajuu we can bond over being losers together or something.

"We are now resuming forward motion. Please remain seated or holding on to the train fixtures for your safety." Out of idle curiosity, I checked the newsfeed app again. Sure enough, it was already updated - All Might had saved the day again, completely upstaging Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady. Note to self: when I start looking for work as a hero - oh, right. I paused for a second, dismayed at just how easy that habit had been to fall into. Well, when I get a job advising heroes, I should work for someone that doesn't operate anywhere near All Might or Izuku, to be sure they stay in business. Or maybe I'll just get an office job, and save up for a house somewhere near where Izuku lives? Hmm, no, he's getting stronger quickly, real estate prices will have risen by then, no way I'll get a cheap deal. I'll marry into a wealthy family in his general area, and live a life of leisure? Sure, as long as I'm daydreaming, why not?

It was with those cheerful thoughts that I finally arrived at U.A.'s entryway. True to Principal Nezu's claim, the omnipresent media harassment at the front of the school had suddenly evaporated. A few discreet police cars were canvassing the area, presumably to dissuade any members of the media from evading whatever restraining order had been set up. On my way in the door I peeked inside the bike shed to make sure that my brand new quirk-rated bicycle hadn't vanished overnight, but thankfully the fact that this was a heavily monitored heroic institution (and the fact that I had a pretty good bike lock) had kept my baby from taking a ride with some stranger. If only the villains from yesterday had as much common sense as bike thieves.

I had wanted to get into the school early so that I could maybe talk to Professor Aizawa before class - he didn't _always_ show up looking like a caterpillar at the last second, only sometimes - but after the villain delay to the train in the morning I was instead running a little late. So as I approached the door to the 1-A classroom, the fact that there was noisy conversation coming from the other side wasn't unusual. That it involved my name, on the other hand, was. "Kuh! I can't believe I was so proud of myself for preventing a panic during the evacuation, when unbeknownst to me, Hikigaya was engaging the real threat!"

"It's okay, Iida! Mumble mumble-" Almost despite myself, I switched to my copy of Jiro Kyoka's quirk, boosting my hearing by just enough to make out Izuku's mumbling. "- still did a good job!"

"Tche, I suppose keeping a bunch of sheep from trampling each other isn't bad for a shitty extra." Despite myself, one of my hands rose up and dragged itself across my face. Dammit Bakugo, one of these days you're going to have to learn how to give a compliment that isn't backhanded. "Besides, you'd have been useless fighting that chick with us anyways."

"Mou, be nice, Bakubaku!" Yuigahama scolded.

"I am being nice!" Bakugo retorted, "I'm just saying it was already too fucking crowded in there for me to blow that bitch the fuck up like she fucking deserved! And stop calling me weird shit, Airhead!"

Yuigahama replied with a hmph of annoyance, and then Yukinoshita cut in. "Bakugo-san, if anything, Iida-san's quirk would likely have been more useful than either of ours in such confined quarters. Realistically it's us who were useless."

"Fuck that," Bakugo said, "we were doing fine. You and me were already figuring out that bitch's moves, and then Hikigaya got back up. If she hadn't ran away like a little bitch, we'd have kicked her ass. Besides, it's not like Glasses here is such a hot shot in close quarters either without room to get up to speed."

"YO, HIKIGAYA!" I winced at the sudden volume and turned off Jiro's quirk, looking left to see Kirishima running up towards me. "Man, I heard about yesterday! Nice job dude, very manly!"

I snorted. "Sure, if that's what you want to call bleeding all over the floor." I was sure that the people in the classroom had probably heard Kirishima shouting, so without any further excuse to eavesdrop (and hopefully Kirishima hadn't noticed just how long I'd been standing there) I opened the door.

"Whoa, it's Hikigaya!" "Hikki!" "Hey, Prez! Way to go!" "Hikigaya-kun, good to see you back on your feet!" "Oh, thank goodness." A cacophony of camaraderie suddenly erupted, everyone in the class looking in my direction. For a moment, I was shocked that it was all friendly, none of it jeering or poking fun, and then I realized - oh, right. They're all heroes. These morons probably think I actually did something good!

Kirishima caught up to me and gave me a solid slap on the back that knocked me out of my daze. "Don't worry about it man! From what I heard, you got knocked down and then you got right back up and got back in the fight! Are you kidding me? That's manly as hell!"

I had to ask. "Do you by any chance read a lot of shonen manga, Kirishima?"

He gave me a big grin. "Aw man, yeah, I love that stuff! You too, huh?"

That explained it. Decades of cultural brainwashing, at their finest. I snorted in mild exasperation. "Let me tell you. Getting stabbed for real? It sucks."

With a laugh and another slap on the back - I really wished he'd stop, it was starting to sting - Kirishima flexed his quirk, making his forearm rocklike and bumpy for a second before reverting it. "Hah! That just means that next time you'll have to bring me along to cover for you!"

"Or me!" Yuigahama said, looking at me with a slightly angry expression. "No more charging off ahead by yourself, okay Hikki?"

I smiled sardonically. "No worries. Next time, I promise I'll be way behind you both." So far behind you, in fact, that I'll be in a different class entirely.

Yukinoshita's eyes narrowed, as though she suspected something. Before she could say anything, though, the door opened behind Kirishima and I, and Prof. Aizawa walked in. Hurriedly, Kirishima and I took our seats. "Okay, class, I have two announcements to make. First," he said, glaring at me, then switching to Bakugo, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama in turn, "since some of you apparently don't know what the rules are, you'll all be writing five hundred word essays on exactly what needs to be done when the evacuation alarm sounds, as well as other important safety procedures that you should be aware of, due tomorrow." Five hundred words? How excessive. "Hikigaya." Aizawa returned to glaring at me. "You'll be grading them."

Ha! Joke's on you, I won't even be in your class! "Yes sir," I said, giving him a wry smirk. He paused for a second before turning away.

"Second," Aizawa continued, "Today's going to be an all-day Basic Hero Training class." Ugh, my last day of this course and it's going to be a day-long gym class? Eh, whatever, at least messing around with my quirks will be fun. "The Hero Course faculty made the decision to delay a few exercises that had originally been planned for the first two weeks in order to give you all a chance to make a positive impression on the media," Aizawa droned dully, "but as you may have noticed, the media has left." Suddenly, his apathetic facial expression morphed into a creepy-looking grin. "That means we get to make up for lost time." Then he held out another one of those silly looking index cards, the same kind that All Might had held out when we did battle training, except rather than BATTLE this one said RESCUE. "Today we'll be doing rescue training, learning to handle all sorts of natural disasters, from fires to floods."

"Man, I'm excited!" "All day, huh? Sounds like this's gonna be rough." "Floods and water are my specialty, ribbit!"

As everybody chattered eagerly, Aizawa's glare intensified. "Settle down, I'm not done yet. It's up to you whether or not you wear your costume for this one, since for some of you it's possible that it'd get in the way, so you're free to wear your gym uniforms if you'd prefer. Get dressed and meet out front, there's a bus that will take you to the training location."

As we all grabbed our gear and split up to the dressing rooms, I couldn't help but look down at my 'hero costume'. Despite being incredibly chuuni, it had kind of grown on me. I would have to remember to take a picture of it… so I could laugh at my horrible taste in five years, naturally. Well, I guess wearing it for one last time today would be fine.. right?

"Something wrong, Hikigaya?" My head snapped up to see one of Mezo's tentacle-mouths hovering near my ear, and I jerked back slightly in surprise.

"Um, just… trying to decide if my costume is good for rescue work or not," I lied, seizing on the first excuse that came to mind.

"Looks fine to me," Mezo said, "you should probably hurry up and put it on, though, you don't want to be late."

Belatedly, I looked around to see that almost everybody in the classroom was finished changing or about to be. "Crap, you're right," I said. "Thanks for the warning." Luckily, my costume didn't have a lot of pieces to fuss over, unlike Iida's, which practically needed an assembly manual. I jammed both of my legs into the bodysuit, rolled it up to my torso so that I could get my arms in, and then zipped up the back. The facemask was actually attached to the bodystocking, but made to look like it was attached to the cape - I didn't bother pulling it up for now, but it would probably come in handy if I had to breathe smoke or soot later. The cape was easy enough to whirl around and fasten to semi-adhesive contact patches on the bodystocking's shoulders, and soon enough I was ready for action. One last time, I thought to myself. Might as well go out with a bang.

Yaoyorozu was waiting when I got out of the changing room, standing in front of all the girls in a way that made me think that she had gotten them all organized. I felt a little guilty about not having done the same for the boys' side, before I remembered that I was going to be leaving the class soon anyways and there was no point to me acting like a president. Also, in the absence of any leadership from me, Iida had apparently taken it upon himself to nag everyone into lining up. Eh, let's just say I delegated the job to him. That's leadership, right?

When we got down to the bus stop and Iida started trying to get people to line up by seat order, though, I had to step in. "Iida." He looked over at me, and I shook my head. "We're in the most prestigious high school in Japan. I think everybody can figure out how to get on a bus."

"Of course, President!" Iida said, coming to attention. "I apologize for my enthusiasm!"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "Don't apologize for it, just- I dunno, save it for class or something."

"Understood!" I could practically hear the unspoken 'sir' at the end of Iida's sentence, and I gave Yaoyorozu a rueful look. She smiled back at me with a commiserating expression. Dammit Yaoyorozu, don't smile at people like that! If you go around being nice to losers like me, they'll actually think you like them despite the obvious evidence that you're out of their league and just being polite! I turned away, staring off at the distant bus as it drew closer. No sense in my entertaining any illusions about girls to begin with, let alone when I was about to drop out and earn the disgust of everyone else in class. God, this sucked. Why the hell hadn't I dropped out before actually meeting people? Oh right, the maybe blackmailing All Might thing. Funny, now that I know about Izuku, I could probably blackmail him for real.

The bus arrived. Despite choosing to sit in an out-of-the-way corner in the back, I quickly found myself flanked, with Yuigahama choosing the seat at my left, and Yukinoshita sitting immediately in front of me. "Hikki, I'm glad you're in school today! We wanted to see you in the nurse's office yesterday, but she said you were resting and we couldn't come in."

I grunted in agreement. "Yeah, I slept for a bit." Stupid regeneration quirk, using all my energy or whatever. Ugh, and it was going to be such a pain in the ass to charge back up, too. Unless I was perfectly healthy and undamaged to start with, it'd keep activating instead of storing itself - and using Stockpile in the first place put stress on my body that occasionally caused damage. There was a reason I almost never got my stores of that quirk up past 20-30%. Well, maybe once I was out of the hero program it'd be less of an urgent necessity to maintain a store of it at all times?

After I didn't say anything else for a few seconds, Yukinoshita did her best to break the ice. "Even so, Hikigaya, I apologize for leaving you alone with only Bakugo for company," she teased, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the noisy blonde.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Ice Queen?" Bakugo snarled.

Ashido Mina, who I hadn't talked to much before, surprised me by clapping her hands and faking a swoon. "Ah! You fought side by side, and now you have a pet name for her already? So romantic!"

"Butt out, Racoon Eyes / No, Bakubaku just likes / Kacchan's just bad with names," Bakugo, Yuigahama, and Midoriya all kind of chimed in at once, the latter of whom called out his explanation from further up the bus.

"Dammit, I told you assholes to stop calling me weird shit!" Bakugo exploded.

As Midoriya scratched the back of his head and shrank back, however, Yuigahama just stuck her tongue out at Bakugo. "Remember my name first, and maybe I'll think about it!"

"Stop acting like such an Airhead, and maybe your name' will actually be worth remembering!"

"Ah! Flirting with two girls at once? Bakugo's such a player! But what about poor Hikigaya? Unless he's fallen into Bakugo's orbit as well?!" You're wrong.

"Dammit Raccoon Eyes, enough with the flirting shit!"

"No, if Hikigaya-san were to fall for a boy, it'd probably be Totsuka Saika." You're… only because he looks so girly, dammit! I mean, no, that's wrong too!

I rested my face into my palm. "Oi, Yukinoshita, don't say things that'll cause misunderstandings. If you're going to make fun of me, make fun of me getting stabbed like a moron and nearly bleeding to death, or something." All of a sudden, the bus got a lot quieter. I looked up from my facepalm to see that nearly the entire back half of the bus was just staring at me. "... What?" I asked defensively.

"Um, Hikki…" Yuigahama began, turning towards me with her big brown eyes glistening, "that's not really something funny to joke about. When we came in and saw you just lying there..." she trailed off, before adding, "I was really scared," in a much smaller voice.

I couldn't look at her. I turned to face the back window of the bus, where the road was flying away from us, whipping away one dash of pavement paint at a time. What did I even say, to something like that? Sorry, I didn't get stabbed on purpose? Or maybe sorry my dying inconvenienced you? How about, sorry I'm the sort of person who copes with gallows humor, because I guarantee you that I'm way more freaked out about it than you are right now? Or maybe I'm not sorry at all, and who the hell do you think you are, telling me what kinds of jokes I can and can't make about it? "...Sorry," I muttered. "I'll try not to let it happen again." That was the important bit, right? As long as I quit, Yuigahama wouldn't have to worry, and I got to live. That sounded like a win-win to me.

As I turned back, the back of the bus was still relatively quiet, our lack of discussion punctuated by Midoriya's panicked denials to Asui and Tobe that his quirk was anything like All Might's. Finally, Kirishima spoke up. "Ne, Hikigaya, I'd been meaning to ask, but - are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," I lied reflexively.

Kirishima didn't look like he believed me, which was fair, because I wouldn't have believed me either. He was too polite to press the point, though, so he just grinned at me. "Right, well, let us know if there's anything you need, Prez! If you decide you need to take things easy today or anything, we'll help you out!"

Happy to be back on familiar ground, I even managed to crack a smile. "Somehow I don't think an easy day is what Professor Aizawa has in mind, but thanks."

As I said that, the bus began to slow. I looked out the window to see an enormous domed complex, a huge facility that could have been an athletic stadium if not for the disproportionately small parking lot. Like U.A., everything about this place seemed to have been built with accessibility in mind, with steps sized for larger than average feet next to the normal ones (and a ramp off to the side), doors that could accommodate giants, and handles that went all the way up and down the door in case of taller or shorter-than-average visitors. The doors themselves were carefully counterweighted so that Professor Aizawa could gently tug the doors open with a bare minimum of force despite their massive bulk; I imagined that even someone diminutive like the Principal would probably be able to do the same. I thought it was an impressive attention to detail - and then the doors finished opening, and I was _way more_ impressed by the facilities themselves.

It looked sort of like a theme park would look if you took out as many safety features as possible. A full sixth of the building was _literally on fire_ , which made me wonder about the air quality in here - how did they keep the fire from sucking out all of the oxygen in the giant sealed dome we were in? Where was all the smoke going? And how was the air in here still a comfortable room temperature? Besides that apparent affront to the laws of thermodynamics, there was also a giant mountain, an enormous waterpark area with an actual yacht in the middle of it, and three different varieties of 'ruined building' areas - cityscapes destroyed by battle, earthquake, and flood respectively.

In short, this place looked like a colossal deathtrap. Everyone around me was going crazy over how cool everything looked, and I just kept looking around and thinking, 'okay, over there's death by smoke inhalation, to my left is death from being buried alive as a building falls on me, there's the falling off of high places and breaking a leg area, oh look, drowning!' I swallowed hard. "How the fuck does U.A. afford the insurance payments on this place?" I muttered under my breath. I heard a snicker of amusement behind me, and turned just in time to catch Jiro Kyoka looking away from me innocently. Well, considering whose quirk I had copied to eavesdrop on the class this morning, I was hardly in a position to throw stones.

As class 1-A milled about in the entryway taking in the sights, a figure walked up to meet us. They were wearing a hero costume that would have almost looked like a spacesuit, if not for the fact that the bottom half of the costume was a shorts & a pair of sneakers rather than anything that would have covered the leg thoroughly. "Welcome, U.A. Students!" The astronaut-suited hero's voice had an artificial buzz to it, as though it was being spoken through a set of speakers. "I'm the Space Hero, Thirteen! And this is my facility. From floods to fires, earthquakes to storms, I'm capable of simulating almost any type of major disaster or accident. I call it, 'The Unforeseen Simulation Joint!'"

Ugh. Corny pro-hero humor, how annoying. Calling your facility the USJ 'as a tribute' to those big entertainment companies whose movies and other media (and sponsorship paychecks) had paved the way for the early hero industry, why don't you show some imagination already! All around me, my classmates were fanboying and fangirling over Thirteen, so excited to meet another 'real hero' who wasn't a teacher that they overlooked the fact that we were all about to be venturing into a deathtrap that this psycho built. Meanwhile, Professor Aizawa had a brief muttered conversation with Thirteen before the two of them broke apart and he turned to address us. "Alright, class, we were going to have All Might come join us for a short time at the start of class to talk about his experiences rescuing people, but it seems he has to fill out some paperwork related to some heroing he did this morning, so that'll either be delayed until this afternoon or pushed to another day entirely." With that, he gave us his trademark creepy smile. "That means we get to jump right into training. Are you excited?"

"Well, we can't jump into things right away, Aizawa-san," Thirteen spoke in his mechanical voice, inadvertently saving us from Aizawa's sadistic tendencies. "There are one or two points that I need to go over first. Well, maybe three. Oh, or four." Oh good, he's going to go over safety procedures with us. Thank god, I knew they wouldn't just throw us into burning buildings without any kind of guidance or safety precautions. "My quirk is called Black Hole. I use it to suck up debris, to unbury people from landslides, to calm raging floodwaters, and to remove all of the oxygen from fires. It's a quirk that I've used to save hundreds of lives. But, if I were uncautious with my quirk, it would work equally quickly at devouring flesh and bone. And I'm some of your quirks are the same, and could easily made lethal." Thoughts of Midoriya's brute strength, Bakugo's explosions, and even Yaoyorozu's casual declaration that she could make nuclear bombs were she so inclined all rapidly flitted through my head. Even I could hurt someone badly with some of my copied quirks if I had the inclination. At the same time, I sort of wondered what a copied version of Thirteen's quirk would look like. Unfortunately, Thirteen's costume looked thick enough that I doubted my 'copy field' would be able to get through the padding. I snapped back to attention as Thirteen continued, suddenly realizing that I had skipped part of his explanation. "... In short, I believe the purposes of quirks are not to cause harm, but to help people, and that is what all of you will be practicing to do today!"

That was it? No words of warning about how not to get hurt in this facility, no safety rules or regulations, just a bullshit inspirational speech about how potentially dangerous quirks can be? I felt so let down - and then I didn't have time to feel anything but panic, as a familiar black mist started filling the stadium below. "Sensei!" I shouted.

Aizawa whirled to place himself between us and the mist. "Huddle up and don't move!" He shouted.

Bakugo slammed his fist into his hand, the psycho, setting off an explosion. "Heh, finally some payback!"

And then the villains started coming out of the mist, and _kept coming_. Dozens of them, some in ragged costumes, others just wearing gangster outfits or shabby street clothes. The one in front, however, had a costume that looked both professionally made and incredibly unsettling, a black bodysuit covered with what I dearly hoped were _imitation_ severed hands.

"Thirteen and Eraserhead, huh?" He called out, in an almost dull, disinterested voice. "That's it? Kurogiri, I thought that girl you hired said All Might was supposed to be here."

"Indeed, that was the case," The cloud of black mist replied, the voice seemingly emanating from a pair of glowing yellow eyes suspended deep within it.

"Oh well," the blue-haired villain sad, scratching at his neck, "I guess we'll just have to start killing kids until he shows up."

Dammit, I thought to myself.

Komachi is going to kill me.


	10. Despite Appearances, Eraserhead pt3

A/N: Well, life has been crazy, and somehow it's been nearly four months since I've updated. While I promised to update once things settled down for me, believe it or not, I'm actually updating today because my life is about to get crazier - I recently accepted a promotion that will have me moving halfway across the country, and very shortly will have no time to write at all. Therefore, I decided that the only responsible thing to do was to use the free time I did have now to deliver the long-awaited update. Thank you to everyone who stayed interested in this fic, and I hope to find time to write again soon.

Move.

"Aren't there intruder sensors? Shouldn't the authorities be coming?" Yaoyorozu.

"They must have a jammer! I can't reach the school!" Denki.

"Sensei, your quirk is meant for one-on-one combat! You can't possibly nullify all of their quirks!" Midoriya.

A sudden feeling like I was drowning, my heart fluttering in my chest like a caged bird, a sudden shortness of breath from forgetting to breathe. Memories of choking on my own blood.

Move!

"You can't be a pro with only one quirk, kid." Aizawa's voice, confident and reassuring, clearly a lie.

"Kill him!" "Let's see you cancel a mutant quirk, Eraserhead!" "Gaaaah!" A mix of confident shouts and ugly jeers, punctuated by the sounds of violence, for as long as Aizawa-sensei lasted, anyways.

Move!

"Hurry up and evacuate!" Thirteen shouted, spurring me into the first semblance of activity I'd been able to find since the black mist first showed up. The thought of running-fleeing-escaping was enough to spur me to action I whipped around to look at the exit, only to see a wall of black mist coming up between us and the door. Despite the fact that we had only been stunned for a few seconds, a few seconds was more than enough for our assailants to have cut off our path of retreat.

"I'm afraid I can't allow that", an eerie voice stated, emanating from the mist. It was deep, cultured, professional, a voice better suited to a radio announcer or to a movie trailer voice-over than to a ruthless killer. "Greetings," the mist said urbanely, "We are the League of Villains."

"First 'Kurogiri', and now 'League of Villains'?" A voice said mockingly. "You people have no naming sense at all, do you?" As my classmates looked in my direction, a few with astonishment and others with smirks, I realized to my horror that the voice had been my own. Why the hell was I mouthing off to a Villain? Particularly one that had already talked about killing us all? Was there some chemical in the water at UA that inhibited common sense?

Yellow eyes in the dark mist narrowed at me. "Catchy names. Flashy costumes. The worship of the powerful as celebrities and the exculpation of their sins against the downtrodden. They are all symptoms of the societal disease that we are here to eliminate." Kurogiri paused menacingly, the black mist of his body roiling in place. I could feel cold fear-sweat trickling down my back, my hands shaking with raw adrenaline as I stared at him intently. "Curious, however, that you knew my name to begin with… ahh, I see. You must be the regenerator. I'll have to make sure to take special care of you." His words dripped with malice, and I started to feel lightheaded.

"Take special care of yourself first!" With a shout, Bakugo and Kirishima leaped forwards, while behind them Tobe shouted orders at his array of tools, sending a bola whirring ahead of them towards the apparent center of Kurogiri's body. Despite the suddenness of their coordinated attack, however, the blows just vanished into thin air, as if they were striking nothing more than smoke and mist.

Kurogiri chuckled darkly. "Ignorant gnats. We came here today ready to kill the Symbol of Peace, All Might himself. Did you really think the feeble attacks of mere students would accomplish anything?"

"Did you really think we were going to take your chuuni bullshit seriously?" Once again, tough-sounding words somehow found their way out of my mouth. I was literally shaking in my boots, so hyped up on adrenaline that I could barely think straight, but when this supposedly deadly villain started talking like a character out of one of Zaimokuza's terrible light novels, somehow the incongruity of it all short-circuited the wires running between my brain and my mouth. Spouting off defiance to the clearly unstable lunatic was, undoubtedly, the stupidest thing I had done since, oh, yesterday afternoon.

Yet somehow, around me I saw spines straighten, fists tighten. My classmates started getting into more combat-ready postures, summoning powers in preparation for attacks, shaking off the panic that had paralyzed them. Maybe idiocy really was contagious. Similarly, Kurogiri himself started taking us a little more seriously, his mist roiling faster and faster, stretching out to the sides to encircle us. "Then, if mere words will not convince you, allow me to do so with actions!" A tidal wave of black mist erupted in tandem with Kurogiri's shout, racing towards us faster than I could dodge. The darkness swallowed me.

There was a split second where I noticed that I was touching someone with a combination discorporate body and spatial manipulation quirk, but between the sheer panic I was feeling and the brevity of the contact I couldn't react in time to copy it. All of a sudden, instead of the familiar tingle of someone else's quirk I felt a sensation of weightlessness followed by the sickening lurch of free-fall, a hot wind rushing past my face, and the bitter smell of smoke. Apparently, Kurogiri had decided that the best way to handle a 'regenerator' was to teleport me high into the sky, right above a blazing inferno! I screamed in very manly terror, sounding not at all like a six-year-old girl as I changed quirks faster than I had ever thought possible, tapping into Vulture Glide and Moon Gravity (my weak copy of Uraraka's quirk) simultaneously to try to slow my fall down.

My precipitous drop immediately tapered off into a much slower downwards float, and I heaved a deep sigh of relief, only to begin hacking and choking on the plume of smoke that I had been teleported into. I hurriedly tugged my facemask back up over my mouth and nose to try and filter the air a little, thinking furiously as I did so. Although I'd been teleported pretty high into the air the smoke and the panic had kept me from really getting a good grasp on my surroundings. Obviously, the ground immediately below me probably wasn't a safe place to land. If only there was a way for me to get back up higher to get a better vantage point - and on second thought, maybe there was. Experimentally, I grabbed my costume's cape in my hands and spread it out wide to the sides, like it was a parachute. The rising column of hot air beneath me grabbed at the fabric, but without anything to keep it anchored to my feet or extended out to its full width, the lift wasn't enough to do anything meaningful. If only I had a quirk that could…

I took as deep of a breath as I could manage, given the smoke, and relaxed my connection to Hayama's flight quirk. My stomach lurched as I started suddenly falling faster, but even as I fell I was already changing quirks to a power that I hadn't found much of a use for up until just now. With an effort of will, my shadow suddenly began to writhe and twist, drawing strength from the dark smoke all around me to become nearly solid, no longer corresponding exactly to the shape of my body but instead looking almost birdlike. Spreading my arms wide, with an effort of will I pushed my copy of Tokoyami's Dark Shadow quirk out from my body and onto my cape, making it grab and adhere to the fabric so that my shadow could manipulate the fabric as if it were a giant set of wings. Without my input, my semi-sentient shadow also stretched out its fingers past the edges of the cape, sticking out like pinions on a bird and grabbing even more lift. By the time I finally got everything set up just right, I was so close to the bonfire below me that I could feel the hairs on my legs start to smolder. I crossed my fingers and threw my arms wide again. This time, my cape caught the air with an audible whumph, and I felt myself being slowly rising upwards on a column of superheated air.

I couldn't help it. I grinned beneath my mask. So what if I had been teleported thousands of feet into the sky by a villain who wanted to see me go splat and then sizzle? So what if I was only managing to pull this off because I had the mother of all thermals below me, and because the dark smoke clouds above me were blocking out the majority of the daylight? After a decade of hoping and praying that my quirk could do something, anything useful, right here, right now, I was flying. It was enough to make me feel lightheaded - or maybe that was the smoke inhalation talking.

Next step: landing. As I slowly rose up into the air, my gut started twisting, a symptom informing me that my bootleg version of Zero Gravity was rapidly approaching its limits. If I stayed up in the air too long, I'd wind up first vomiting into my mask, then falling out of the sky like a stone as gravity suddenly started working correctly on me again. Neither sounded pleasant, so I started flapping my arms to try to make my way out of the cloud of smoke. Coughing and teary-eyed, I sculled my way through the sky with all of the grace of a drunken fruitbat, searching desperately for somewhere to land. After several alarming dips and dives as I struggled to figure out aerodynamics on the proverbial fly, I eventually got far enough free from the smoke to see that not too far away from me was a broad area in which the fires had not only been put out but also iced over.

So, the villains knew Yukinoshita was an ice user and decided to throw her into the fire zone? This was just not their lucky day. With that cheerful thought in mind, I held my breath and swapped Uraraka's quirk for Hayama's. As my full weight returned, my shadow-cape 'wings' were suddenly no longer generating nearly enough lift to keep me in the sky. Luckily, despite the sudden addition of a hundred-odd pounds of extra weight, my shadow was just barely strong enough to keep the cape open and keep that fall a glide, rather than a plummet. Together with Hayama's flight quirk I actually managed to start diving forward at a respectably shallow angle, one that would get me clear of the burning building and over to safer ground.

The downside of this, of course, was that every bit of momentum I managed to steal away from my downward motion was being translated into forward motion - I might not have been falling steeply, but I was still falling fast, stooping towards 'safety' at what had to be thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour. Intellectually I knew that the increased speeds were driving my copy of Hayama's quirk to reinforce my body to compensate somewhat, but it was still going to be a rough landing.

And then I saw them. Six or seven villains, all circling around Yukinoshita, keeping her dodging as she tried to fight back. Almost instinctively, I adjusted my course, aiming right at the biggest, meanest, heavy enough to stop my fall-est looking one of them all.

At the last second, right before I was about to collide with the villain that looked like a rock golem, I switched out Dark Shadow for Stockpile, and swung my fist at the Villain as hard as I could.

There was an audible bang as my doubly-reinforced fist impacted the Villain's stony skin, and then he went flying, careening head-over-heels across the frozen earth before slamming up against the ruins of a once-burning building with a groan. For my part, the shock of the collision blew me back a few feet, but I managed to catch myself with Hayama's flight quirk and landed on my own two feet like I had planned the whole thing, instead of just having gotten ridiculously lucky. I looked up. The villains all saw me, and took a step back.

It was a golden moment, one where a real hero like All Might probably would have used the opportunity to say something cheesy like 'mind if I drop in', or 'never fear, for I am here'; Hikigaya Hachiman, on the other hand, decided to use the moment to pull down his face mask and start coughing violently, because holy shit had I inhaled a lot of smoke. I was lightheaded, seeing spots, and unsteady enough on my feet that if any of the villains had reacted in time, they probably could have knocked me out with one hit.

To do that, though, they would have had to take their eyes off Yukinoshita, who was already capitalizing on the distraction I had provided by lunging for one of the villains between us. Feeling the wave of cold approaching me, I hastily swapped out flight for Yukinoshita's heat absorption quirk - the last thing I needed with my lungs this messed up was to have them start freezing shut! Yukinoshita glided forward, seeming to almost drift over the pavement like a ghost, combining fancy footwork with power-assisted slides that didn't require her to move her feet at all. In the blink of an eye, she had delivered heavy blows to everyone in her way and was standing back to back with me. "Are you alright?" She asked, her voice taut with tension.

Surreptitiously, I stopped coughing to look at my hand. I'd managed to split my knuckles, but other than that it didn't look like I had mimicked one of Midoriya's boneheaded stunts. "I'll live," I croaked. "You?"

"Getting a little overheated," she murmured, low enough that the villains couldn't hear, "but nothing I can't handle."

I nodded to show that I understood. My weak copy of Yukinoshita's quirk helped keep me from freezing in cold temperatures, as if I was wearing a heavy coat, but her full powered version was a nearly perfect insulator, such that she could probably stick her hand into liquid nitrogen without the slightest bit of discomfort. Unfortunately, that also meant she had no way to let her own body heat out. In a drawn out fight where she couldn't afford to drop her guard for a single second to cool off, that could be a real liability, potentially ending in heat stroke if she wasn't careful. "Got it," I said. "Let's finish this fast."

The 'suspension bridge effect' is an oft-misused piece of psychological research, which basically states that if you look at someone attractive right after you've been through a scary experience, you might fool yourself into thinking that you've fallen in love with them, solely based on the fact that your heart is still beating fast, your palms are still sweaty, and you're still having trouble breathing. In short, it's a pseudoscientific garbage theory, a theory only popular because it can be neatly summarized in a magazine column and included in a list of '10 ways to get your crush to notice you.' So when I say that Yukinoshita turned to smile at me in response to that statement, and that my heart skipped a beat in turn, please remember: even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even shitty teen magazine columns can have some elements of truth to them. Obviously, the suspension bridge effect had to have been in play, making me interpret an ordinary smile of camaraderie and friendship to mean something more, and clearly no good would come of pursuing it, and anyway there were a bunch of villains charging at us so even if that smile had, however unlikely, meant … something, it really wasn't the time to try and figure that out!

Together, Yukinoshita and I charged the enemy forces. As I sped towards the villains I could see nervousness in their eyes, doubtless born of having seen me slap their leader across the pavement like a hockey puck.

It wasn't me who they should have worried about.

No longer surrounded, Yukinoshita was free to display just how talented in a fight she really was. With deceptively slow and gentle seeming movements, my classmate floated into the reach of a boar-headed brute wielding a machete. He slashed at her with an overhead chop, only for her to brush against his descending arm with a palm. On contact, there was a flash of light, and his arm jerked to her right, twisting his whole body to the side and putting him not only badly off balance, but rendering him completely unable to guard against Yukinoshita's follow-up palm strike to his liver. Just like that, a single exchange of blows, and the villain was down for the count. Precise, calculating, measured - even if Stockpile let me temporarily copy Yukinoshita's quirk for short durations of time, I had no way of copying her hard-trained skills.

Thankfully, I had my own way of fighting. Having learned my lesson about knives and other sharp objects, I decided to target one of the unarmed fighters, a heavyset guy whose quirk gave him dull black skin and an enormous, toothless maw for a mouth. I charged straight at him, channeling my Stockpiled version of Yukinoshita's quirk to build up extra power from all of the ambient heat, and then punched him as hard as I could. The snow-white energy of Yukinoshita's power merged with the orange glow of Stockpile to create a gauntlet of shimmering energy over my fist, which hit the villain's blocking arms with an audible bang. That one punch busted his guard wide open, and with literally superhuman speed and strength I took advantage of the opening to punch him again.

His nose broke beneath my fist with a sickening crunch.

It made me want to step back, to try to find a way to resolve this that didn't involve people mutilating pieces of other human beings' anatomies in an effort to subdue them. Instead, after a shocked pause, I hit him a third time, this time in the stomach. He fell over backwards. I tried not to feel sick. Thirteen's corny speech about powers being used to save people, instead of to hurt them, somehow seemed a little less corny all of a sudden.

It didn't take Yukinoshita and I long to clean up the remaining three goons - none of them was a match for Yukinoshita individually, and I was fast and threatening enough that there was no way for them to gang up on her. I was happy to let her do most of the actual fighting; it was clear that Yukinoshita had actual training with things like non-lethal takedowns, whereas my strategy for the same was 'pick someone particularly sturdy-looking and try not to hit them anywhere too important'. Also, she was just plain better at fighting than I was, so really it was the most efficient division of labor. After the last villain fell to the ground, Yukinoshita turned to me. "What now?" She asked.

"I didn't see anyone else trapped in this burning area when I was flying around," I said, "and we haven't seen any more villains either. My guess is that they only had so many goons who were fireproof, and probably didn't teleport many other students to our area because of that."

Yukinoshita nodded. "I agree. And I think we would have heard something if there was anyone else fighting nearby," she added, her gaze sweeping across all of the nearby burning buildings as if to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. Indeed, aside from the moans and groans of pain coming from the downed villains, and the constant dull roar of the flames, our surroundings were pretty quiet. After a second to confirm that I agreed with her on that fact, Yukinoshita continued. "The fires near here look like they've been pretty thoroughly extinguished," she said, "I think it's probably safe to leave the villains here without worrying about something happening to them."

I went over to check on the first guy who I had hit. He was out cold, but still breathing. With a bit of assistance from Stockpile, I managed to roll him onto his side into the recovery position to keep him from choking on his own vomit. Because of course that's a thing now that I have to worry about in my day to day life now, whether or not I'm going to accidentally kill somebody by hitting them too hard. Isn't heroism glamorous and exciting? But I didn't have time to think about that right then, so I shook my head to clear it and refocused on our current situation. If there was nothing in particular keeping us here - "In that case, I think we should find a way out of this area and get to somewhere that we can assess the situation," I suggested.

"Right," Yukinoshita said, already looking around to try and find an exit. "People might need our help."

"Let's hope so," I murmured under my breath. I was acutely aware that Kurogiri had literally tried to not just kill me by teleporting me so high up, but also aimed for the extra lethality of setting me on fire afterwards just in case I survived the fall. My powers had let me escape the deadly situation, if barely, but how many of my classmates would have been able to say the same?

Together, Yukinoshita and I set off down the main 'street' of the burning cityscape at a quick jog, trying to quickly get out of the area without losing our ability to monitor our surroundings for ambushes or wasting all of our energy before we even got into another fight. It didn't take long for us to reach the edge of the Fire Zone. The shift from the dark, smoke-choked ruins of the fire zone to the cheerful, sunny ambiance of the USJ was striking, and probably would have been a relief if the well-lit facility hadn't been a backdrop for a chaotic superhuman brawl. I did however feel a sense of relief when I saw that Eraserhead was still alive and fighting by the front staircase, and by tapping into my telescopic vision quirk I could just make out that about half the class was still at the top of the stairs - unfortunately, Kurogiri appeared to still be nearby as well, but at least it seemed that a portion of the class had escaped being teleported into danger. Unfortunately, that also probably meant that nobody had managed to escape the USJ or had gone to call for help. Just as I was about to turn to Yukinoshita and suggest that we look for a back door to escape out of, I saw a flicker of movement in the sky that made me change my mind.

Darting back and forth underneath the geodesic glass canopy of the USJ were a quartet of figures: a bald-headed vulture-man, a Cronenbergian fly-person, and an almost blimp-like giant were all chasing after my classmate Hayama Hayate, forcing him to turn and swerve in order to avoid their harassing attacks. "Yukinoshita," I said tersely, my focus on the distant aerial dogfight. "If I get those flying villains' attention, do you think there's anything you can do to help take them out? Throwing a rock with your powers, maybe?"

As I asked the question, I glanced at Yukinoshita out of the corner of my eye, only to see her smirking confidently. "Oh, so even the great Hikigaya has days where he doesn't realize something that a quirk can do? Just get them above me, and I'll take care of the rest." Her face was so smug that I would have wanted to punch it if it hadn't been so stupidly pretty.

"Ugh," I grumbled. Since I had no clever rejoinders to that remark - mostly because she was right and I had no idea what she was planning - I decided to let my actions speak for me and tapped into my Stockpile of Miura's Light Arrow quirk. At a 20% Stockpile, the maximum firepower of my fully-charged arrows would probably only be as powerful as the shots that Miura could rapid-fire without charging at all, and my 'quiver' of arrows would run out quickly, but it was still probably the best long-distance ranged attack that I had. Also, if there was anyone in our class who would recognize the brightly glowing projectiles as something coming from a friendly face, Miura's teammate Hayama was probably top of the list. Without further discussion, I extended both hands towards the fliers, then slowly drew my left hand back to my chest. As my hands drew apart, the space between them was filled with a crackling beam of light that seemed to want to pull my hands back together. Miura called the beams her light arrows, but rather than a bowstring, it felt like I was pulling back on a giant rubber band. The further apart my hands got, and the longer that I kept them at that extension, the stronger the force upon them, and I let that build until even my Stockpile-boosted strength was having trouble holding on - and then, with just my left hand, I let go.

The projectile of coherent light sizzled across the domed-in 'sky' of the USJ, revealing our position to friends and foes alike. I had aimed it for the Blimp-guy, since he was the largest target, but unfortunately he saw the light arrow coming. The balloonlike villain hurriedly opened his mouth and started letting himself deflate, which sent him backwards on an erratic course. I was honestly a little glad I'd missed - if his quirk made him that much like a giant balloon, I didn't really want to see what happened if I poked him with a proverbial pin. In any case, as soon as Hayama saw the arrow he started accelerating towards us, the villains following in his wake. As they approached I backed up towards a small cluster of ornamental trees, firing additional arrows as I did so in an attempt to keep the villains' attention on me, and also to get myself clear of the blast radius from whatever Yukinoshita was planning. Unfortunately, after three or four more arrows, two things happened simultaneously - Hayama and the villains had made it over to our location, and my Stockpile of Miura's quirk ran out.

Hayama wooshed past me overhead, just skimming the tops of the grove of trees I had backed myself into. The bald-headed thug with the vulture quirk was the fastest of the three villains chasing Hayama - which made him the first one to get into Yukinoshita's range. I watched as she suddenly sucked in heat from the nearby area as hard as she could, freezing the air and ground around her. The vulture villain was high enough above her that I would have expected him to feel sort of chilly for a few seconds as he flew right past her, but instead he let out a startled squawk and started flapping his wings frantically, trying to regain lift. Unfortunately for him, however, by that point Yukinoshita had a full tank of kinetic energy, and with a spike of white light from the bottom of her feet Yukinoshita jumped impossibly high into the air, pushing herself level to her target - and then spiking him down to the ground like an oversized volleyball with a shout of "Downdraft Spike!"

Apparently there was no honor among villains, because the giant fly villain swerved around Yukinoshita's trap rather than rescuing his ally, choosing instead to follow close on Hayama's trail and therefore heading straight towards me. Just as he reached my position, I took a deep breath and expended my entire 30% stockpile of Kamui Woods' quirk at once. The tree that I was standing next to shot up in height in response to my copied quirk, its branches growing at superhuman speed. As the flying villain shouted in surprise, I used my connection to the freshly grown branches to force them to reach out, wrap around, and finally encircle the flying villain in a wooden cage. "Ugh. There goes another six hours of my life that I'll never get back," I grumbled, but despite myself I smirked as I said it. I couldn't help it. The angry cursing coming from the branches above me was music to my ears.

Having seen the fates of his two companions, the giant blimp man started to turn around and run away, but without his buddies backing him up he was like a zeppelin without a fighter escort - easy pickings for the advanced fighter jet that was Hayama Hayato. Hayama swung around in a wide loop, picking up height, then stomped down from above on the villain's stomach, knocking the air out of the villain and forcing him down to the ground. As soon as the villain was knocked out, Hayama flew over towards Yukinoshita and me. "Hikigaya! Yukino!" Wait, you're on a first name basis with her? "Thanks for the save! Is Miura here too?" He asked as he landed.

"Just me using Overdrive on her quirk," I replied, using the term I had made up while figuring out how to lie about the source of my powers. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"What's the situation?" Yukinoshita interjected. "Is everyone alright?"

Hayama shook his head slowly. "I don't know. It looked like some people were still fighting in most of the zones I flew over, but that's as close of a look as I could afford to take while I was being chased. Eraserhead-sensei is still fighting, but I can't get too close to him or his powers might make me start falling out of the sky. Thirteen-sensei is stuck protecting the rest of the class from the black mist guy, and I think maybe trying to make it so that someone can escape out the front door, but the black mist guy is between everyone and the exit."

"If they still haven't gotten anyone out to go find help, then we could be in trouble. Eraserhead-sensei won't last forever." Yukinoshita pointed out, her expression grim.

"Then if they can't find a way out, it'll have to be us. Hayama, did you see any service exits or back ways out of this place when you were flying around?" I asked, looking around for something of the sort myself. Unsurprisingly, with all of its other departures from common sense construction guidelines, it appeared that the USJ had also neglected to mark out the exits with visibly illuminated signs. Dammit Thirteen-sensei, building codes exist for a reason! On the other hand, if we couldn't see them, the villains would probably have trouble finding them too, which meant... "The villains might have teleported people there to guard those exits as well, but even if they did, those villains probably won't be as tough to handle as Kurogiri - Yukinoshita and I can probably clear a path for you to get out and to get help."

Hayama shook his head. "I didn't notice any other exits, but I kind of had my hands full being chased. I could fly up, take another look?"

"That'd take time," Yukinoshita said firmly. "Hayato, you get tougher and stronger as you get faster, right? Can you just break out through the glass?"

With an evaluating look, Hayama stared at the geodesic dome over our heads. "Maybe. I used the glass as a springboard before when I was running from those villains, and it seemed like it was pretty tough, but if I managed to accelerate across the whole dome, that might let me build up enough speed to make it through."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure might is good enough, especially with Kurogiri watching out for people trying to escape. If he noticed what you were doing, he might be able to stop you." A thought popped up in the back of my mind, something that I had seen on a saturday morning cartoon, and I slowly started giving Hayama a wicked grin. "We're going to have to give you a speed boost."

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

Roughly sixty seconds later, I was standing five meters tall, my right arm in almost a shotput position, while Hayama Hayato crouched awkwardly on the palm of my hand. "You ready for this?" I asked him.

"Don't worry, Yukino, prez. I'll be back with the cavalry before you know it," Hayama replied, which sounded like a yes to me. I took a deep breath, and then I tapped into Stockpile, accessing super-strength at the same time that I went from five meters tall to nearly twenty. As I grew I stepped backwards, twisting so that I could put as much of my core into the motion as possible, and then finally I pushed out from my body with the hand holding Hayama, shot putting him into the air as hard as I possibly could. The triple strengths of Stockpile, my giant body, and the quirk-driven growth I was undergoing all combined into one massive surge of force that launched Hayama across the geodesic dome at a truly preposterous speed. If I hadn't known that that he got tougher the faster he was going, I might even have felt guilty for throwing him that hard. Instead I just felt sweet vindication and a rising sense of hope as Hayama broke through the glass dome above our heads with a crash. He was out, and help would soon be on its way - all we had to do now was hold out until the heroes got here.

Unfortunately, the villains knew it too. From my temporary giant height, I could clearly see into the central area of the facility where all of the villains were surrounding Eraserhead - and all of the villains there could see me. I had just enough time at my full height to catch the blue-haired villain first sending some more mooks towards Yukinoshita and me with a wave of his hand, and then he himself began to run towards Eraserhead-sensei, finally taking personal action. I didn't really want to stick around, so as soon as my burst of height wore off I let myself shrink all the way back down to normal size and threw a panicked look over my shoulder to Yukinoshita. "I think I got their attention," I shouted, "there's about a dozen of them headed right for us!"

Yukinoshita smirked coldly. "Only a dozen? If they're the same kind of worthless gutter trash we fought in the Fire Zone, this won't even be a challenge."

Well, there went my chances of trying to convince her to run away. "It only takes one knife, Yukinoshita," I said instead. "Stay focused!" Sure enough, the villains charging through the bushes towards us were carrying a whole variety of knives, machetes, hatchets, and other cheaply-attainable tools of violence. Since it was Yukinoshita I was fighting beside, I opened the fight by switching to Backdraft's Water Cannon, spraying water out in a wide arc over the approaching crowd and soaking as many of them to the bone as possible, as well as creating puddles that would freeze into ice slicks. After that, they were up close, and I started fighting for my life.

The next sixty seconds were kind of a blur for several reasons, not the least of which was that it only took me about five seconds of fighting the crowd back before somebody punched me in the face. I staggered back from that blow and returned the favor with a 20% version of one of Bakugo's Explosions, but after that spent a lot of time ducking, dodging, and otherwise struggling to stay alive. At one point I got grabbed, and had to blow through my reserve of Denki's Electricity quirk to escape; at another I was dodging kicks from a guy with stilt-legs, and shut him down by using up my Stockpile of Eraserhead's quirk, forcing his legs to retract so quickly that he stumbled and fell. Despite those few small successes, however, I was racking up bruises, spending stockpiled quirks like there was no tomorrow, and generally starting to slow down. It didn't help that every time I had to expend a stored up quirk to get out of a sticky situation, I had to stop channeling Heat Conversion, which meant that I was intermittently fighting in subarctic temperatures. Yukinoshita wasn't doing much better than I was. Her face was red and flushed from overheating, and her once pristine kimono was now stained with dust, grime, and frozen blood - both other peoples' and her own. All things considered, it was a relief when the cavalry finally arrived.

Announcing their presence with an arrow of light, Miura, Asui, and Midoriya hit the villains attacking us from behind. Midoriya looked like he had hurt one of his hands somehow, but despite that, he strode forward into the battlefield like a wrecking ball crackling with green lightning, bouncing from one villain to another and taking them out with punches from his good hand that were almost too fast to see. Asui supported him, her long tongue flickering out to trip, blind, or otherwise hamper any villain that looked like they were trying to attack, while Miura picked off stragglers with rapid-fire bolts of light.

"Are you guys okay?" Midoriya shouted, his stutter for once entirely absent.

I coughed, putting a hand to my side where someone had kicked me in what felt like it was probably a kidney. "Nice timing." Without them showing up to help, we would have been toast - and that was with two of us against only a dozen enemies, holding out for just a minute. Meanwhile Eraserhead had been fighting the whole mass of villains at once since the very start of the invasion, from the sounds of it was still going strong, and didn't have a strength quirk. I didn't know what to think about that, other than that Pro Heroes were freaking amazing.

"We saw you from across the whole facility," Miura said, her eyes slightly wide. Although all three of the people approaching us looked a little damp, and were giving the slowly-dissipating zone of frosty air around Yukinoshita as wide of a berth as possible, Miura's soaked and bedraggled appearance was a particularly significant departure from her normally immaculately coiffed look. To her credit, she didn't seem very concerned about her looks at the moment, instead asking "was that Hayama you threw through the ceiling?" with a mix of concern and hope in her voice.

"Yes," Yukinoshita said, panting from exertion. "The pros… should… get here soon." I did my best not to stare as she loosened the neck of her kimono slightly, trying to get even more access to the icy air around her to cool off faster.

"We should see if there's anything we can do to help Aizawa-sensei, kero," Asui muttered nervously. "The three of us saw him fighting on our way to help you guys out, and he looked like he was having a hard time."

Personally, I felt more like just collapsing where I stood, but she did have a point - while it'd be easier to just assume that Pro Heroes were full of magical pixie dust and would never fail to save the day, I knew as well as anyone that all it took was one wrong move, one knife in the wrong location, for things to go wrong. "Alright," I said, "But carefully. We don't want to put him at risk by becoming hostages."

Together, the seven of us slowly crept forwards, inching our way into the bushes separating us from our teacher's battlefield. It was far enough away from the fight that I had to use my vision and hearing quirks to get a clear view of what was going on, but between the distance and the fact that we were using the foliage as cover, it was probably the safest place to watch from. As it turned out, we were just in time… to see the fight end.

"Are you sure this is alright, Shigaraki Tomura?" In the middle of the plaza, the black mist villain Kurogiri stood next to a similarly dark figure - although in comparison to Kurogiri's mistiness, the second villain was incredibly solid looking, a bulky beaked figure so muscular that he almost looked fat, with a mutation quirk that not only gave him a beak but made it look like he had an exposed brain, of all things. The two of them seemed like they were just standing to the side and watching as the blue-haired and hand-masked villain - Shigaraki, if I had heard Kurogiri correctly - and a few other villains all tried to take down Aizawa-sensei. Our teacher was looking pretty rough; it looked like someone's quirk had eaten through the skin of his elbow, revealing the muscle tissue and bone beneath.

"Huuuuuh? What's the problem, Kurogiri?" Shigaraki leapt back from the battle, motioning at his flunkies to keep Eraserhead busy. "It's obvious those brats ruined the plan already, so what's wrong with me having a little fun? I've already got Eraserhead's weakness all figured out. You see, when he uses his quirk, his hair pushes back and -"

"Shigaraki-dono." Kurogiri interjected, "I don't doubt your skills at all, but it's already been several minutes since that student with the flight quirk slipped through our net. Perhaps we should eliminate Eraserhead promptly in order to secure our lines of retreat?"

"Hhhhhhhh." Shigaraki let out a low groan, reaching up with one hand to scratch furiously at his neck, his fingernails drawing thin lines of blood. "If we hadn't been screwed over by the RNG… tch. Fine. Nomu!"

And then the bulky black villain moved. One second, Nomu was standing over by Kurogiri; the next, he already had his hand on the back of Eraserhead's skull and was piledriving our teacher into the concrete with superhuman speed and strength. Next to me in the bushes, I could hear everyone letting out gasps of dismay and shock as our teacher was defeated. "We've got to save him!" Midoriya hissed.

"Wait," I whispered back, holding up a hand to stop him.

With my quirk-assisted hearing, I could clearly hear Kurogiri saying, "My deepest apologies, Shigaraki-dono, I'm certain that we can arrange a rematch against Eraserhead at some later date, if you truly wish to defeat him yourself."

"... No," Shigaraki said after a few seconds thought, seemingly unperturbed. "Eraserhead is just a sidequest," he said, pronouncing the last word 'saido-questo' in badly mangled Engrish, "I was only fighting him to keep from getting bored. Go collect Thirteen, and see if any of the expendables got lucky and took out any of those kids... Maybe that giant kid too, if you see him," he added in a statement that chilled my blood in particular. "I feel like making a statement before we go."

"As you will, Shigaraki-dono," Kurogiri said with a bow.

As he did, I whispered to the group, "as soon as Kurogiri teleports away, that'll be our best moment to act. Get ready!" Everyone tensed up. Small flickers of electricity crackled around Midoriya, Asui sank into a crouch preparing to hop, Miura put her hands together in preparation to create an arrow, and a cold breeze emanated from Yukinoshita's direction. I myself was desperately trying to figure out what quirk to use, assuming that I was probably going to be a priority target.

And then our plans, along with the villains', were suddenly rendered completely irrelevant by a loud BANG. A cloud of smoke erupted from the front doorway, and from within that cloud a commanding voice echoed throughout the facility, effortlessly making itself heard despite the distance. "It's alright!" it proclaimed, "because I am here!"

There was nothing quite like seeing the Symbol of Peace himself coming to your rescue to make a person feel safe. Even wearing tan suit pants and a white dress shirt, the palpable menace in All Might's facial expression made it abundantly clear that the villains who had attacked us were about to have a really bad day. I myself felt a vicious smile of schadenfreude stealing across my face, but it suddenly froze as I realized that the villains somehow seemed just as excited to see All Might as we did. "A last second Time Attack event, huh?" Shigaraki said with anticipation, his fingers flexing convulsively. "Nomu, Kurogiri! Get ready."

The hefty, black-skinned villain with the exposed braincase tossed Eraserhead's unconscious body to the side, turning his attention towards the distant staircase and All Might. My gaze sharpened. "Asui," I whispered, "as soon as All Might engages them, you jump out and grab Aizawa-sensei with your tongue. Miura, give her covering fire. Midoriya, Yukinoshita, if they decide to attack us, you're in charge of keeping them away. I'll support Asui. Are you guys rea-"

Suddenly, there was a blur of motion too fast for my eyes to catch, and a massive burst of wind that roared through the stadium. All of the villains who Shigaraki had deemed 'expendables' were simultaneously knocked unconscious, Aizawa was suddenly gone from his position behind Nomu, and All Might was standing next to our hiding spot, Aizawa in his arms. "-dy?" I finished, only to immediately feel my cheeks heat up in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, Aizawa-kun," All Might said, ignoring us for a second to address our teacher. "I shouldn't have been late." Aizawa just groaned in response, which while not great in and of itself was at least a reassuring sign that our homeroom teacher was still alive. Turning to us, All Might gave us a brief nod of approval, though keeping a wary eye on the trio of villains in the center. "Young Hayama caught up to me and explained what happened. You've done well. Now, take Aizawa-kun to safety, and leave the rest to me!"

"U-um, A-All Might," Midoriya protested, "Earlier the v-villains said they had a plan to k-kill you, shouldn't we -"

"Midoriya-shonen." All Might interrupted Midoriya, just giving him a very manly thumbs-up. "I'll be fine."

Oh my god, Midoriya is worried about his dad, and his dad is telling him not to worry. It's actually a little touching, or would be, if Midoriya wasn't being a moron. "He won't be able to go all out if he's busy worrying about y-us," I told Midoriya, hastily correcting myself before I could spill the secret to any of my classmates who were too dense to read the subtext. "Come on, let's go."

It seemed like even the villains noticed something was up, because the blue-haired villain called out to us with a sneer. "Not bad, All Might. Hitting me, saving your colleague, and checking on those brats all in one move? You're pretty quick… but not as quick as I was expecting you to be. I guess the rumors are true, after all - you've gotten weaker, haven't you?"

The accusation was a bit of a shock to me, and from the sounds of dismay coming from my fellow students it was new to them as well, but All Might just smiled and nodded. "Don't you worry, young man," he proclaimed, "I'm still more than strong enough to deal with you. Carolina -"

"Nomu."

"- Smash!" Even as All Might leapt into battle, the rubbery black villain named Nomu was quick to intervene, his fleshy body taking All Might's full-force blow with ease. The two of them began to trade a series of punches, All Might using his super-speed to narrowly evade blows while Nomu just let himself be hit.

Meanwhile, I had started leading everyone away from the battle. I had taken it on myself to grab Aizawa's upper body, letting Midoriya grab his feet. I could also feel embarrassed heat starting to color my cheeks as I pondered my next move. "Uh. You guys. You, uh." I paused for a second. "Do you mind looking the other way for a second? Just, watch All Might fight for a little bit."

"What is it, Hikigaya?" Yukinoshita asked, and I did my best to suppress a flinch as I met her beautiful ice-blue gaze.

"I have... a quirk I can boost to help Aizawa-sensei," I eventually said, not meeting hers nor anyone's eyes. "Just… look away for a second, okay?" Thankfully, she did so without smirking, perhaps due to the situation we were in, and so did everyone else. I was almost certainly going to get teased for it later, but as soon as everyone was looking away, I puckered up my lips and planted a big, wet, cringe-inducingly audible smack of a kiss on Aizawa's bloody cheek. I hadn't accumulated much of a charge in Recovery Girl's Heal quirk, primarily because giving somebody too high of a dose of healing could be dangerous and I had no way of practicing controlling how much of her quirk I used (and also because it was a freaking embarrassing quirk to use), but a 30% charge was enough for Aizawa to jerk back to consciousness, flailing and kicking a bit in Midoriya's grasp before I managed to calm him down. His combat goggles had been knocked off when he had been slammed into the pavement by Nomu, as his eyes went wide with panic it was easy to see that they were completely red and bloodshot. "Easy, easy, Aizawa-sensei! You're safe! It's us!"

After a few seconds, Aizawa slowly relaxed back into my grip. "Where -" he croaked, looking around in a panic.

"We're still in the USJ," I answered, "All Might is fighting the villains. We're evacuating. I hit you with a weak dose of Recovery Girl's quirk. Do you think you can walk? Or hold on to a couple of us if we do a fireman's carry?"

After a quick pause to reorient himself, Aizawa's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "Get me up," he ordered. I helped him stand, throwing his undamaged left arm over my shoulders as I did so in order to support him. His bloodshot eyes focused in on the still-ongoing fight between All Might and Nomu, narrowing slightly as one of All Might's punches exploded the villain's arm only for the villain to regrow it right back. Seeing as Aizawa was interested in watching, I didn't make a move to drag him away from the fight either - it seemed like we were at a relatively safe distance, and I was a bit curious to watch the Symbol Of Peace throw down against a full-fledged Villain myself.

Time and time again, the physical paragons slammed their fists against each other, sending shockwaves throughout the facility. But even above the thunderous din of the punches, I heard Shigaraki shouting in triumph. "You have no chance, All Might! Nomu is a biological weapon designed to destroy you! Even if you can get past his Shock Absorption quirk, his High-Speed Regeneration will render all of your attempts to hurt him irrelevant!"

All Might just smirked. "Hmph. If that's the case, then!" Faster than even the rapidly moving Nomu could react, All Might got behind the bulky black figure, caught him up in a wrestler's hold, and then slammed him backwards into the cement with all his might in a perfect German Suplex, throwing up a huge cloud of dust.

"Then if you can't hurt someone, all you have to do is immobilize them, right?" Shigaraki's gloating voice called out. "Well I'm sorry to inform you, but even if the cement had been tough enough to hold Nomu - and he's as strong as you, so it wouldn't have been, with a Warp Gate like Kurogiri around, trying to immobilize Nomu... is a lost cause." As the smoke cleared, we all saw with shock that Kurogiri had sent a patch of shadowy mist to underneath All Might, allowing Nomu's body to seemingly split in two, its upper body coming up from the portal to sink its fingers into All Might's side. "Face it All Might, you've been caught. Now all Nomu has to do is to drag you into Kurogiri's Warp Gate… so that Kurogiri can cut you in half."

Time seemed to slow down to a standstill. Fear. Panic. Shock. All of those emotions and more, going through my head and appearing on the faces of everyone around me. Midoriya, getting ready to jump into action. Flickers of movement in the periphery of the battle, as other classmates got ready to intercede on All Might's behalf. And the quiet words of Eraserhead, ringing in my ear.

"Oh? Is that so?"

With a visceral squelch that I could hear from tens of meters away, the warp gate slammed shut on Nomu's body, carving it into two separate halves as Kurogari shouted out with surprise and disgust. Despite the fact that he was so injured that he needed me to support him, Eraserhead still managed to call upon his quirk, a burst of invisible pressure pushing his hair away from his forehead and shutting Kurogiri's Warp Gate down cold, with Nomu's body still suspended in its midst. The shock of being chopped in half must have loosened Nomu's grip, because All Might sprang free from the grapple, clutching with one hand at a bleeding wound on his side.

"Nice job, Aizawa-kun!" All Might said, giving a thumbs up and a massive, white-toothed smile in our direction.

"Just stay out of my line of fire!" Eraserhead called back.

"What?! HOW!?" Shigaraki shrieked in dismay.

Eraserhead started walking forward, so I did so as well, keeping myself under his left arm to keep him steady. "Don't you know?" He called out to the villains, walking towards the battlefield step by step as his hair slowly fell back down towards his face. "You should know better than to count out a pro! And while standing far away from fighters with super strength is a smart tactical decision," Eraserhead said, "it made it easy for me to target your teleporter without catching my ally in the line of fire, so if anything you can only blame your own cowardice!"

"An - an injury like this is nothing!" The blue-haired villain replied with a shout as Nomu's upper torso started bubbling with cell regrowth. "Nomu's high-speed regeneration will-"

Again, Eraserhead's hair blew back from his face. As it did, Nomu let out a pitiful birdlike squawk. It had been slowly crawling towards All Might as it regenerated, not letting its wounds hamper it, but as soon as Eraserhead hit it with his quirk it spasmed, clawing at the ground a few times before suddenly collapsing, its regeneration interrupted. "Hmm?" Eraserhead taunted. "You were saying?"

But there was no response. Taking advantage of the fact that Eraserhead had to focus his vision on the Nomu, Kurogiri had swallowed his boss up in mist and vanished. Just like that, the villains were gone - well, two out of the hundreds that had attacked, anyways. As Eraserhead allowed his eyes to rest, the Nomu slowly began regenerating once again, but either it had been knocked unconscious or it was inert without being actively commanded, because other than the small movements caused by its body being regrown, it didn't budge a centimeter, even when All Might walked over to it and nudged it with his foot.

"Well done, Aizawa-kun!" All Might called out, one hand still against his bleeding side. "I had intended for you to escape to go receive medical treatment, but as it stands I'm glad you stuck around!"

"Hikigaya hit me with a shot of Shujenji's quirk," Aizawa droned, a note of exhaustion entering his voice. "I'll survive for now. What about you?"

"It's just a flesh wound," All Might replied, standing a little straighter, though still leaving his hand at his side. "I should be able to hold on for another half hour or so before it needs to be treated."

It seemed like there was something important being said that I had missed - maybe a code phrase? - but whatever it was, I could feel Aizawa relax slightly as I supported him, seemingly reassured. Nevertheless, Aizawa-sensei still glowered in All Might's direction. "Don't be reckless," he admonished.

All Might gave him a solemn nod. "I promise, I'll seek medical treatment just as soon as I see to the safety of the rest of the students." And with that, he was suddenly gone, moving like a whirlwind through the USJ.

"Way to go, sensei!" "Impressive, kero!" "That's a pro hero for you, huh?" "Smart thinking, Hikigaya!" All Might's departure was seemingly a symbol for the rest of the class to run in and start congratulating our homeroom teacher - and me as well. From other hiding places near to the center of things, a few other students also popped out - Bakugo, Kirishima, Yuigahama, and Todoroki had all rescued themselves, and had been waiting for chances to step in and make a difference. A triumphant feeling rose up in my chest - or then again, maybe it was the broken rib. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I was beginning to realize just how much pain my body was in. I could switch to Zaimokuza's quirk to start healing it a little faster, but without enough of a charge to make it so that all of the pain and suffering would be over in a split second, using his quirk would just make everything hurt more. Even if his quirk could probably regenerate limbs at full power, maybe that Nomu's quirk would be better?

"Alright, everyone," Aizawa said, pitching his voice to carry above the hubbub. "Let's get out of here. Just because the villains are gone doesn't mean that they didn't leave any explosives or other sabotages behind. All Might is taking care of everyone else, so keep moving!"

"Hey everybody," Kirishima called out as the celebrating crowd headed for the exit, "Don't forget to include 'sabotage' in your list of reasons to evacuate for your five-hundred word essays!" It was a bad joke, but somehow it was met with laughter anyways.

Ah, crap. I'm actually going to have to review all of those now, aren't I? I looked over my shoulder at Aizawa, who met my glance and just smirked. Ugh. Well, nobody ever said I had to grade them fairly. In fact, I predicted a course of 100s all around. In the meantime... "If you're that energetic, Kirishima, you can come carry Aizawa for me."

Still grinning, my red-haired classmate hurried over to help me out. "No problem, prez! Man, you got beaten up a bit, huh?" He said, pointing to his eye.

Tentatively, I reached up to touch my own eye, only to wince as I felt a puffy and tender bruise. "Ugh. If I come home looking like this, my sister is going to completely lose it." I said, giving Kirishima a thankful nod as he took Aizawa's weight. "Be right back." Before he could reply, I had zipped over to the unconscious bulk of the Nomu. Dammit, all of the villains in the Fire Zone had been heteromorphs, and I had been too busy fighting after sending Hayama out through the dome to worry about copying quirks - in other words, I had to come away from this whole debacle of a field trip having gained something, and this Nomu seemed like just the ticket. It was a little concerning being so close to it, but since All Might and Eraserhead had just let it lie there, odds were good that they didn't think it was going to get up anytime soon, so why should I? Before I could lose my nerve, I leaned down and furtively poked the Nomu in the arm. Weirdly enough, it felt like it had four quirks, not just one, and one of them even felt almost familiar. It took me a second to sort out all of the confusing sensations, but as soon as I did my face paled and I practically threw myself away from the Nomu like it was a red-hot stove.

It wasn't just a quirk that had felt familiar. It was one I had already copied. I looked down at the blankly staring, bulky 'biological weapon' before me, and almost unbidden a name leapt to my lips.

"...Zaimokuza?"


	11. Sometimes, I Can Be Self-Centered

A/N: I got a little sick of writing emotionally drained, self-flagellating Hikigaya Hachiman back during chapter 8, so I took a little different approach to things this time around. Let me know what you think!

"Pffffff….. Haaaaaaah."

It's not that I don't know that smoking cigarettes looks bad when you're a pro hero; it's that I don't care. Witness interviews aren't exactly fun even on the best days, and judging by what Detective Tsukauchi said over the phone? I was going to need my nicotine fix for this one.

Idly, I reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror. Driving a convertible was nice, especially on a beautiful spring day like today, but it did make it a pain in the ass to keep my hair from getting all tangled by the wind. As it turned out, my hair was fine, but seeing my naked eyes in my reflection reminded me that I hadn't put my 'mask' on yet. There wasn't really any point to my wearing one; it wasn't like there were a lot of other tall, busty brunettes out there who also had quirks that gave them bulky, biomechanical right arms, but a few years ago when I asked Gang Orca how he managed to go out to buy groceries without being swarmed by fans (even I had been being pestered pretty frequently, and I'm way less famous than he is), he kept giving me advice about 'maintaining a clear visual distinction between your on-duty and off-duty personas.' I've never been much of one for masks, though, so instead I bought a pair of mirrored sunglasses. These days, the mirrorshades were as much of a part of my professional 'look' as the long white coat or the black suit underneath it, and the last thing I wanted to do when making a first impression on a witness was to make them think that I wasn't taking them seriously.

I stubbed out my cigarette, put on my shades and the black leather glove I used to cover up my metal hand, and got out of the car, walking up towards what looked to be a fairly nice apartment building. Way nicer than mine, even, but as long as I was living the single life, I was happier spending my paychecks on cigarettes, take-out meals, and a really nice car than spending it all on rent for a place bigger than one person needed. And given my luck with men lately - well, anyway, I should focus on what I was actually doing here. Shaking thoughts of my relationship woes out of my mind, I reached out with my gloved right hand to ring the doorbell, the shiny chrome skin of my arm gleaming slightly in the sunlight.

"Coming!" I heard from inside. After a few seconds the door opened, revealing a dark-haired pre-teen girl. My first impression of her was that she was the lively, energetic sort; she was wearing clothes that were loose and easy to move around in, and her hair was at a short, sporty length. As she took in the sight of me in my hero outfit, her eyes widened, sparkling adorably. "Eeeeh?! Cyberpunch-sama?"

"That's me. Pro hero Cyberpunch, Hiratsuka Shizuka, at your service." I gave the girl a polite but genuine smile and reached out to shake her hand. It was always nice to meet a fan. I didn't have that many nationwide, but in Chiba at least I could usually count on getting a pretty good reception. "Is this the Hikigaya residence? I was hoping to speak to Hikigaya Hachiman."

The excited look on the girl's face faltered, her expression falling into a more worried cast. "Ah, um, he's here, but. Onii-chan's still asleep." She stepped back slightly from the door to let me in. "Um, would you like to come inside and wait? I can go wake him up for you."

I stepped inside to the foyer and exchanged my shoes (one of my dressier pairs, since there wasn't much of a risk of a foot-chase during a home interview) for a pair of guest slippers. "Then, please excuse me. And yes, please wake him up if you don't mind. I'm not in a hurry, though, so let him know he can take his time if he needs to."

"Okay," she said in a subdued tone of voice. As she walked away to do so, I just barely managed to hear her muttering. "Stupid onii-chan, when I said you should get all famous so I could meet a bunch of Pro-heroes, this was not what I meant!"

As I walked into the apartment proper, my initial impressions that this was a nice place were only reinforced. It wasn't that it felt like a rich person's place per se; the living room wasn't dominated by an incredibly expensive television set, there was no fine art on the walls, nothing really spoke of conspicuous consumption. Rather, it was the little things. All of the furniture looked relatively new and looked like it was built to last. The curtains matched the throw pillows and the rug, while the coffee table matched the bookcases. I could see into the kitchen from the seat I took on the sofa, and all of the appliances matched each other. Many small details that all added up into the impression that someone had spent time, effort, and money to make this a comfortable living space. Compared to the majority of places that I had to visit for witness interviews, it was downright homey.

After a brief muttered conversation, the young girl walked back out into the living room. "He'll be out in a few minutes," she said apologetically. "Um, Cyberpunch-sama? Would you like something to drink while you wait? We have water, tea, juice, coffee -"

"Just water is fine," I interrupted her, "and please, my pro hero name can be a bit of a mouthful. Just call me Shizuka-san, it's fine. What's your name?"

Despite her earlier heavy mood, she still seemed a little bit starstruck. "Ah! I'm Hikigaya Komachi, nice to meet you! Oh, well you probably could have guessed the Hikigaya part, but yeah call me Komachi that's fine too! Oh, here, um, your water."

I smiled gently and took the cup from her. It was a pretty solid glass tumbler, similar to the brand I had at home. Actually, the more that I looked around, the more that I noticed that a lot things around the house looked pretty sturdy. "Komachi-chan, does one of your parents have a heteromorph quirk?"

"Nope!" She chirped with a sly smile. "Just me!"

I looked the skinny, perfectly ordinary-looking girl up and down in surprise. "Oh, is that so? You know, I actually teach self defense classes for heteromorphs and other people with super strength. What's your quirk rated at?" I didn't really _like_ Heteromorphic Strength Classifications; they were part of a legacy of discrimination against so-called 'mutants' like me, a method of imposing harsh fines and expensive licensing requirements on people who looked physically different under the noble guise of 'reducing public quirk use.' But the laws weren't as bad these days as they used to be, and the HSC was actually a pretty handy shorthand for figuring out what accommodations I would have to make for my students.

As expected, rather than getting nervous at a government hero asking about her HSC, Komachi's sly smile grew even wider. "Class A," she replied smugly.

I hurriedly swallowed the sip of water I just took in order to keep myself from spraying it all over the coffee table. "Class A? Seriously?"

"Wanna arm wrestle?" Komachi challenged, sitting down across from me and plunking her elbow down on the coffee table.

"Oi. Brat. Don't ruin the furniture." I turned at the sound of a new voice to see a young man, possibly a little bit taller than average but with a slouch that made him look shorter. His hair was messy, probably because he had just gotten up, and he was wearing pajama pants and a loose white t-shirt that did little to hide the fact that he was in seriously good shape for a teenager. The most striking thing about him, however, had to be his eyes, which were currently staring at me with the kind of bitter, cynical expression I was more used to seeing on burnout detectives than idealistic high-schoolers.

I returned the stare with my best professional smile, taking off my sunglasses in one of those interviewer's tricks that sometimes helped people open up to me. "Nice to meet you, Hachiman-san, and I'm sorry to show up unannounced without calling ahead," I said. "I hope you recognize me, but if not, I'm Pro Hero Cyberpunch. I'm here on behalf of the National Police Agency to ask you a few more detailed questions about some of the information you gave us yesterday. Feel free to wash your face, have a coffee, grab something to eat, whatever else you need to do to wake up in the morning, and we can talk when you're ready."

"Oh, yeah, the detective said they'd probably be sending someone out," he said, a bit of energy and determination suddenly sparking in the depths of his dead-fish eyes. "Just give me a few minutes."

"You had a long day yesterday," I said sympathetically. "Take your time." He just grunted in reply, shuffling off down the hallway towards the bathroom. As the door closed, I turned back to Komachi. "Does your brother have low blood pressure in the mornings?"

Komachi gave me a wry smile tinged with sadness. "Actually, Onii-san's kind of grumpy all the time." She pulled up her knees to her face, huddling in on herself slightly. In a much smaller voice, she added "he might be mad at me today, though."

"At you? Why?" I asked, trying to put on my best 'tell big sister what's wrong' voice.

"Onii-san _hates_ making other people worry about him or take care of him. I mean _hates_ it," Komachi said, looking up to meet my eyes. "Like, mom offers him a ride somewhere and his eyebrows just go like this," she said, pushing her forehead with her index fingers to make an exaggerated crinkle in the middle of her brow, "like, all, 'don't look down on me, I have a bike!' And whenever he's clearly in a bad mood, if you ask him about it, he's always all, 'it's fine', or 'it's nothing special,' or 'must have been something I ate,' and like, mom and dad pretend to believe him? Because they're all, like, 'he's at that age,' and 'teenage boys need their space,' and 'he'll come to us when he's ready.' Well, Mom is. I think it bothers Dad more, because he's, like, _always_ giving onii-chan lame life advice. But, well, the other day…"

Komachi slowed down, the torrent of words and funny-voice imitations of her family members dwindling to a trickle. Once again, she buried her face in her legs. "The other day I yelled at him for hiding stuff, and pretending to be fine, after he … he got hurt." She tucked herself a little deeper into her ball. "I was worried."

"Oh sweetheart," I said, putting a comforting hand on Komachi's shoulders, "I'm sure he won't get too mad at that, I'm sure he knows you were doing it because you cared about him, right?"

"Mmm," she agreed with a sniffle. "But, last night he was yelling at Mom and Dad, saying stuff like 'heroes get hurt sometimes, deal with it' and like he wasn't yelling at me but he was still really mad and loud and he -"

"Komachi-chan," I interrupted her gently. "A lot of times when someone goes through something stressful or scary, afterwards their emotions are still all hyped up and they can feel more sad or angry or scared for a while. I'm sure that once Hachiman-kun has had time to calm down and relax, he won't be mad at you at all."

Komachi looked up at me with wide eyes, about to respond, when from down the hallway, I heard the sound of a toilet being flushed. Komachi must have too, because she instantly straightened up and grabbed for a tissue, quickly wiping away the evidence of having been upset. After a few seconds, her brother reappeared from the hallway, looking a bit like he had splashed some cold water on his face to wake up. He made a brief detour to the kitchen to grab a can of coffee from the refrigerator, then walked over to join us on the couch, ruffling Komachi's hair as he passed her by. I couldn't tell if he had heard our conversation from the bathroom, but the gesture of affection caused Komachi to brighten up considerably even as she swatted his hand away.

There was a crisp click and a tiny hiss of air as Hachiman opened the can he was holding. He raised it to his lips, took several deep gulps, and placed it back down, looking me straight in the eyes with a determined gaze. "Okay. I'm ready."

I looked for a second at the young man in front of me. Some people, after they peered into the abyss, flinched. It wouldn't have been unusual for him to drop out of the hero program after something like a villain attack, let alone two such attacks back-to-back. Apparently, this kid was made of sterner stuff. "Before we get started," I began by asking, "how much do you know about Pro Hero specializations?"

He stopped for a second to think. "Like whether a hero is better at fighting villains, or rescuing civilians, that sort of thing?"

"More or less," I agreed. "It's not really official, more of a set of shorthand that everyone uses, but generally if you say that someone's a Combat Hero or a Rescue Hero or a Support Hero, people will know what you're talking about." I paused for a second to make sure that we were on the same page, and he nodded. "With that said, I have a bit of a rarer specialization. I'm what's called an Investigative Hero, a pro whose quirk assists them with information gathering and evidence collection."

"Eh? Why is that rare?" Komachi interjected with an adorably confused look on her face. "I thought heroes caught criminals all the time!"

"Well, usually when a hero catches a villain, it's either because they catch them in the middle of doing something bad, or because the police tracked the villain down and called the heroes in to catch them," I explained patiently. "Investigation is the police's specialty. And even if a Pro Hero has a quirk that's useful to investigations, if the police have somebody on the force with a quirk that can do the same thing, then they won't always call the heroes for help because they can do it on their own." I looked from her to Hachiman, and while he didn't seem too perturbed for the moment at her interruption, and hadn't kicked her out before we started… "Actually, Komachi-chan," I said, "your brother said some things to the police yesterday that made them think that his quirk could be a big help to their investigation. That's why I'm here. I specialize in helping the police with missing persons cases, and your brother may have given us some important leads on a few of those. But, when we get started we might discuss a few things that the police would rather keep confidential, so would you mind giving the two of us some privacy at that point?"

"Oh!" Komachi said with surprise. "Sure! Actually, I should probably go grocery shopping at some point today anyway, let me just go get the list and I'll be out of your hair. Onii-chan, anything you want while I'm out?" she asked, matching words to action as she grabbed a piece of paper off of the refrigerator and slipped on her shoes.

"Check and see if protein powder is on sale," Hachiman replied, "other than that... chickpeas, spinach, more eggs..."

"Yeah, yeah, hero health food, already on the list," Komachi complained good-naturedly. "You know you can ask for, like, comfort food and stuff too, right?"

"...ah. Then, maybe some hamburger?" he said, "And maybe some chips? Recovery Girl-sensei did say it'd be better if I ate a little more…"

Komachi just sighed at her brother. "And you only remember this now? Honestly!" She turned to me with a long-suffering expression. "Big brothers take _so_ much looking after." With that parting line, she was gone.

An awkward silence spread for a few seconds after she slammed the door shut behind her, before I finally smirked. "Heh. Cute kid."

Hachiman let out a good-natured groan. "What's worse is, she knows it, too." He let out a deep sigh, and then his eyes narrowed as he looked straight at me. "So. You obviously had a reason for getting rid of Komachi, and I highly doubt it was that bullshit about police confidentiality, since we're having that conversation here in my house and not down at the police station. What's going on?"

Hm. He's sharp, for a kid. "Yesterday in your interview with the police you described an individual, a so-called 'biological weapon', and claimed that they had four quirks," I said, making sure that we were on the same page.

He nodded. "I did," he replied with a tense voice.

"All four quirks that you described were… potential matches, at least, to persons on the National Missing Person database, most of whom have gone missing within the last several months." I sighed. "One of whom, Zaimokuza Yoshiteru, you were able to identify by name." He winced at the name. "From what the officer at the scene said, it sounded like you were close with him?"

Hahciman shook his head convulsively. "I don't…." his voice cracked. "I don't deserve to call myself a friend of his, or anything. I didn't even know he was missing. We were just classmates."

Despite myself, I blinked in surprise. "You didn't know? The notes from the investigation said that they visited his middle school to ask if anyone knew anything."

He shrunk in on himself, hanging his head. "If they came in on a day that I was out sick… I probably wouldn't have heard about it. I was... pretty unpopular in middle school."

I felt a sudden surge of kinship. Me too, kid. Me too. "Well…" I trailed off awkwardly, "Either way, I'm guessing that the Chiba PD didn't follow through on the investigation properly. I'm going to be lighting a fire under their asses about this after we're done here, believe me." He didn't respond, just sitting there looking at the floor. "Listen, my guess is, the officer on duty probably got enough info to judge that your friend's disappearance was probably related to a recent string of missing persons cases, the same ones that I'm investigating, and stopped asking." That got his attention. I wanted to take out a cigarette and smoke as I explained, but it was someone else's house so I resisted the urge and just continued. "There's been an uptick of unexplained disappearances lately. All of them people with no ties to crime, all without any apparent reasons to leave their lives behind… and all with powerful quirks."

"That's why you had Komachi step out, isn't it?" Hachiman asked, his voice hoarse. His eyes glittered with unshed tears that were swiftly being burned away by righteous indignation and big brotherly protectiveness. "You think she's a target."

"It's possible," I said bluntly. "We still don't have proof that these disappearances are being caused by anyone in particular, and if they are, we don't yet have a firm grasp of how they decide who to abduct… but I'll be frank with you, the existence of a teleporter of the caliber of this 'Kurogiri' suggests a lot of possible answers to a few locked-door mysteries we've come across." I smiled gently at the kid, trying to ease his nerves a bit. "Personally, I think the risk to your sister specifically is small. Most of the disappearances that we've identified so far have been adults, with older teenagers a small minority. But there's no sense in talking about it in front of Komachi and making her worry, right?"

Hachiman took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Right," he said. "So, you think that I can help you with these disappearances?"

"I hope so." I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a voice recorder, setting it on the coffee table between us. "The thing is, there are tens of thousands of people who disappear every year in Japan. Usually, whenever we find someone without identification on them, we compare them to the missing person registry. If we have usable fingerprints or photos, we use those first, but in cases where a victim has been affected by a mutagen like Trigger or physically altered by someone else's quirk, then we try to identify people by their quirks." I sighed. "In theory, quirks are as unique as fingerprints, therefore we shouldn't have a problem matching people up. In practice, while no two quirks are the same, there are a _lot_ of quirks that are roughly pretty similar to each other. If all we're going on is a rough description of what happens when somebody uses their quirk, there can be a lot of potential for misunderstandings or bad matches."

"And because my quirk gives me a lot of detailed information on the quirks I copy, you think I can help you narrow things down?" Hachiman asked rhetorically. He looked curiously at the voice recorder on the table between the two of us, then back to me. "Just tell me what I need to do."

"Kheum-hum. Alright," I said, putting my best 'formal business voice' on. I reached down to switch on the recorder, a little green light blipping into life as I pushed the button to let us know it was working. "Saturday, April fourteenth, year 21XX. Interview with Hikigaya Hachiman, U.A. student, hero track." I began. I reached out to pause the device for a second and looked up at Hachiman, switching back to a less formal tone of voice for a moment. "The recorder's just to make sure that I don't forget any details or miss out on anything when I take the info back to the office." He nodded, so I switched the recorder back on. "Hikigaya-san, with your consent, I'd like you to use your power copying quirk on me and to describe the results in detail so I can get a baseline for how your power works. After that, I'd like you to give me as much information as you can on the quirks that Nomu had so I can hopefully use that information to identify who the previous owners of those quirks were. Are you willing to help me?"

"Yes," he said for the record, and then he coughed lightly before reaching out to pause the tape himself. "Sorry, but 'previous owners?' I could tell there were four quirks in the Nomu's body somehow, but..."

Oops. I sighed and reached for a cigarette, only to stop myself as I remembered that I was in someone else's house. At least I said the wrong thing in front of a kid who was going to be a pro, and not some panicky civilian. "I suppose you deserve to know," I said slowly, "but if I tell you more about this I need you to promise me two things."

His eyes narrowed. "What, like I didn't hear this from you?"

I smirked. "Nah, that much isn't a problem. I'm actually going to be letting people know that I told you once we're done here. Probably gonna get yelled at, but eh," I added with a mumble. "In any case, first, I need you to promise me that you'll keep it to yourself. There's more than a few things that Pro Heroes need to keep from being public knowledge to prevent mass panics, and this is one of them."

"Okay," Hachiman said, his voice serious. "I can do that. And second?"

"Second." I glared at him, giving him my best impression of Endeavor in a shitty mood. "You do _not_ look into this on your own. No poking around sketchy websites looking for information, no vigilante investigations, none of that. If you want to help get justice for your friend, you do it through official channels, with somebody or preferably a whole team of somebodies watching your back. Do I make myself understood?"

The little punk actually scoffed. "Hiratsuka-san. Just because I'm trying to be a Pro Hero doesn't make me stupid."

I could feel my eyebrow twitching. "No, but you're a teenager, so that automatically makes you suspect," I fired back.

"Tch." He folded his arms in annoyance, unable to think of a response. Hmph, you're not bad, kid, but I've got the advantage of a decade's worth of experience in snappy comebacks over you! … shit, it's actually over a decade. Dammit, when did I get this old? "Alright, alright, if it makes you feel better, I'll say it out loud, I promise not to look into this by myself," he suddenly said, startling me from my self-pity. Whoops, guess I made him think I was waiting. "So what's so scary about all this that you're being this serious?" Hachiman asked.

"A Villain," I said softly. "Thanks to you informing us yesterday that the Nomu possessed multiple quirks, our number one suspect right now is an old foe of All Might's, a villain who can steal other peoples' quirks and then either use them for his own or give them away to his allies. Goes by the alias 'All For One'." I said the last three words in English, and almost despite myself I still paused for effect after saying them. When All Might himself says someone's name that seriously, it's hard not to do the same. Hikigaya didn't interrupt, so I continued. "He went inactive and was presumed dead about five years ago, but it looks like he's back in action." The fact that All For One was a monster from the Troubled Century, the fact that he had nearly a hundred years of experience as an active villain, I kept those under my hat for now. No sense scaring the kid off too early. Even as it was, the kid's eyes went wide, and I held up a hand to keep him from exploding with questions. "Listen. For now, this is all you need to know. More to the point, it's all I can really tell you without bringing you in on the investigation if I don't want to get in trouble with the detectives leading it. If you want to find out more, you're going to have to show me you can handle yourself."

He blinked. "Handle myself? What do you mean?"

I shrugged, a slow smirk stealing across my face. "Get your provisional hero license, place well in the U.A. Sports Fest, impress one of your teachers enough that they recommend you to me, that sort of thing. Give me something I can use to convince everyone else working on the investigation that you won't be a liability so I can bring you in without getting hassled," I challenged him.

Predictably, Hikigaya Hachiman's eyes narrowed, his fists tightened, and he sat up straight to look me right in the eye.

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Later that night, back in my cluttered and claustrophobic office, I lit up yet another cigarette. All around me on my desk, piles of paper detailing the quirk profiles of missing persons towered, while directly in front of me a final, significantly shorter pile was fanned out so that I could see the profiles in detail. I hit play on the voice recorder yet again. Just like the past few times I had listened to this section, Hachiman's voice came out dry, almost clinical.

"The first thing I notice about your quirk is that it's heteromorphic. There's a difference between quirks that belong to people with minor physical mutations, and true heteromorph quirks - only heteromorph quirks make me feel like my body is the wrong shape. After that, I can feel which areas are the most different from me; for instance I can feel that my bones ache slightly. If I think about my bones specifically, I get a feeling of solidness, heaviness, and metal. That's all over; I'm guessing that your left arm isn't much weaker than your right, even if it looks more 'normal'."

I hadn't responded at the time, instead doing my best to keep up a poker face, but it was true. I had tricked more than a few villains in the past by making them wary of my bulky metal right arm, then sucker-punching them with my left.

"There's also another area of difference that's spread through your whole body," the recording continued, "but it's denser around your spine and skull, so it's probably your nerves and not your circulatory system. That's got some metallicness to it, but there's also something weird… reminds me of some psychic-class quirks I've scanned before. Those are usually centered on the brain, though, not spread out through the body. I'm not sure what good it does to have telepathic nerves in your arms and legs… fast reflexes, maybe? I'm cheating a little bit there, I think I read that you had those on your hero website, but telepathic nerves seem like they would either cause that or some sort of touch based telepathic impulse like pain induction, and given how reinforced the rest of your body is, fast reflexes seem like the better fit."

Again, he was right. Not that it was a big deal to be able to say that I had fast reflexes; that was a part of my abilities that I wasn't terribly hesitant to share, but the fact that my reflex speed was fundamentally telepathic in nature was the reason that I couldn't respond to disaster operations where the Wild Wild Pussycats were on the scene. I love Mandalay, she's fun at parties, but her quirk is so loud that it actually messes with my motor control if I'm too close. What's more, even I hadn't known that until I found it out the hard way!

"Speaking of your reinforced body, you do have some additional strength… your muscles feel extra 'twitchy'. Good at high speed movement and for sharp bursts of power, but probably not a lot stronger than normal for sustained activity. And nowhere near as strong as my sister." Even through the tinny speaker of the voice recorder, Hachiman's voice came out wry and smug.

Of course I'm not as strong as your sister, sis-con! The reactionary assholes who set up the HCS in the first place called Class A the 'fierce beast' category! And somehow she looks completely normal? I was a little tempted to look her up in the Quirk Registry just to see what kind of quirk she actually had, but I restrained myself; technically I could justify the request by saying that I needed to see if his estimation of our respective strengths was accurate, so I wouldn't get in trouble for doing it, but from a basic human decency standpoint looking up an acquaintance in a national database in order to satisfy my curiosity about their quirk would be rude and unprofessional. I'd just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope that she signs up for the self-defense classes I teach.

Finally, Hachiman's voice got a little bit more hesitant, as he got onto unfamiliar ground. "The biggest difference from normal physiology is the right arm, of course. I was expecting it to be stronger or for the muscles to be hydraulic or something, but I'm not getting a lot of feedback from my muscles telling me they're the wrong shape, so that's not it. Instead I'm getting a feeling of, like, missing pieces where you have the spikes or fins coming out. The telepathy nerve feeling is strong at the base, there's like little knots of nerves there? But the feeling doesn't extend out to the ends of the fins, so… I'm guessing that those fins are maybe heat sinks, probably full of blood vessels or something to help you cool off when the lumps in your arm are activated. Your skin feels a little like your nerves where it's metallic, but not as strongly. Maybe it's an amplifier or a transmitter… and my hand feels numb, like there aren't nearly as many nerves in it as your quirk is expecting, and the missing nerves all feel extra telepathic, more sensitive than even the rest of your body. It feels like your entire arm is just a support structure for your right hand, with the dense clumps under the fins acting like biological computers to process the data coming in from whatever your hand touches." Despite having heard the recording multiple times already, I still felt a little uneasy listening to it. It was like I was being audibly dissected. "Unfortunately, since it's a heteromorph quirk, I can't just turn it on and see what it does, but if I had to guess… maybe psychometry? Reading telepathic waves off of things you touch?"

And again, I heard my almost disbelieving voice. "And you said that heteromorph quirks were the ones you were _bad_ at?" I was _still_ surprised, when it came down to it; there were other people out there with power copy quirks, some of whom could even copy heteromorphs, but I didn't know many that could get data so quickly and easily.

Surprisingly, Hachiman's reply didn't sound as proud as you'd expect from a cocky little shit that got into U.A.; it sounded almost dull or depressed. "Back when I was trying to get my quirk to be useful, the counselor recommended that I do my best to try to use it a lot, to stress it out so it could grow stronger. Like building a muscle, you know? So hypothetically I might have spent a significant amount of time doing things like, uh, going onto the subway or out into the city and just, bumping into random strangers to copy their quirks and then breaking them down to see what they did."

"You're lucky nobody thought you were trying to pick their pockets," my voice replied dryly.

"Right… lucky…" he said, adding a nervous laugh. "Anyway, my quirk never got stronger in the way I hoped it would, but I did eventually get better at telling what other quirks did, so… I guess it wasn't a total waste of time."

I hit pause on the tape recorder and lit another cigarette. Dammit, it was like looking in a mirror and seeing myself ten - okay, twelve - years ago. A bullied kid, getting themselves into a hero program mostly out of desperation, not knowing what to do with themselves once they succeeded, and then… "Pffffffff…. Haaaaaah." I blew out another cloud of smoke, staring into it wistfully. Well, unlike the me of the past, the Hikigaya kid seemed like he was at least reasonably cautious; hopefully as long as I could keep giving him reasonable goals to strive for he wouldn't go too far off the rails investigating this League of Villains the way I did against the Creature Rejection Clan.

I hit play again, "No, not a waste of time at all," I heard myself say. "And you can do this to any quirk you copy?"

"More or less," Hikigaya's voice responded. "Though once I drop a quirk to copy another one, it eventually gets hard to remember all the details because I can't just go back and check."

"I see. Do you still have all four of the Nomu's quirks? If not, I might be able to -"

"Yeah." I remember him nodding determinedly, his mouth pressing into a thin line. "I kept them," he growled, "and even aside from the whole kidnapping people for their powers and wanting to kill All Might, whoever put this combination of powers together is _vile_. The speed? Comes from an adrenaline quirk. Normal adrenaline supercharges your body, slows down your perception of time, lets you tap into 100% of your strength - that quirk's superadrenaline actually speeds you up in time, forces your muscles to activate above their capacity, and so on. But to keep up with All Might? The Nomu would have had to be locked into a permanent state of panic. And that's not even the worst of it."

"The next quirk, the strength quirk? The person that got abducted for it probably thought it was an exercise quirk. The more you destroy your muscles, the more super strength they have when they heal back up. But to push that up to All Might's level of strength, you'd basically have to torture someone over and over. They would have needed Zaimokuza's regeneration just to survive - and it had to be his regeneration specifically for them to benefit from it, because his quirk replaces damaged cells with healthy cells in a really similar way to actual healing without creating like scar tissue and so on, and apparently that's pretty rare. The fact that it doesn't numb the pain any probably wasn't a particular concern of theirs, but with enough superadrenaline in its system the Nomu might not have felt the pain at all."

"And the reason they needed all of that muscle, was the shock absorption quirk. One that stored the energy from impacts in its muscle fibers, so it could release the energy later. I think whoever put that Nomu together did so knowing that they would torture it, knowing that they could force it to build up an incredible bulk of muscle, all so they could set it up against All Might and watch him effectively punch _himself_ to death." I hit pause again, cutting off my requests that he go into more detailed descriptions of the quirks and his exceptionally useful, exceptionally detailed responses. Once again, I heard the raw anger and outrage in Hikigaya Hachiman's voice.

Again, I remembered his response to my challenge, to my telling him that he needed to find a way to impress me if he wanted to be brought in on the investigation.

" _I'll see what I can do_ ," he'd said.

"Pfffff…. Haaaaaaah." I let out another cloud of smoke.

I should probably start cleaning up around the office, if I'm gonna have an intern in a couple weeks, huh?


	12. Sometimes, I Can Be Self-Centered pt2

A/N: Desperately trying find time to write before it all evaporates. Somehow, here's a second chapter for the week. Enjoy!

School desks, morning yawns, people sitting at their desks and chatting, Kacchan standing at the center of attention and bragging. Our first day returning to school after the USJ incident was just like any other day. But, there was an energy there that hadn't been present before. Everyone was on edge. That day, we had seen not just our own strengths and weaknesses, how far we had come and how hard we had yet to go, but also the consequences of allowing a Villain to operate unchecked.

Nomu. A weapon aimed at the life of All Might. A hideous lobotomized monster, incapable of doing anything but following its master's command. And trapped somewhere inside it, the mind of an ordinary student. The mind of someone close to Hikigaya Hachiman, our class president… and someone who I owed a debt of gratitude to.

No, maybe all of us did. Iida-kun and Uraraka-san told me after the incident how they had been trapped by the black mist villain, how they had been unable to force their way past him to escape. If Hikigaya-san hadn't risked his life to send Hayama-san through the dome, who knows how long help would have taken to arrive? And if Hikigaya-san hadn't been able to get Aizawa-sensei back on his feet, who knows what would have happened to All Might?

Hikigaya Hachiman was strong. I admired him. But as impressive as his quirk was, no matter how amazing the things he achieved on the battlefield were, it still wasn't half as impressive as the way that he talked to Kacchan.

"Yeah, me 'n Weird Hair n' Loudmouth all got warped to the same spot in the Ruin Zone or whatever the hell you call it. We all jumped at him first, so I'm pretty sure he sent us to where he had stashed the most of his goons - no, sorry. His burnable trash. Frankly, because of us, I'm pretty sure the rest of you extras got off light!"

"Yes, yes, we all know you're strong, Bakugo. Now sit down already, homeroom starts soon." If a dismissive comment like that had come from anyone else, Kacchan would have blown up swearing at them, but coming from Hikigaya Hachiman…

"Tch." A single click of irritation with his tongue, and actually following directions!? For Kacchan, that was practically the same as anybody else saying 'sorry, of course!' How!? Was it the fact that he beat Kacchan in the fitness test? The way that he complimented him first before telling him what to do? He knew what advice to give me to make sure I figured out One For All, so maybe I should ask him -

"Good morning, Deku-kun!" I looked up from my slightly burned and tattered notebook to see a pretty girl smiling at me.

"U-U-Uraraka-san, good morning!" I stammered in surprise, feeling blood flush to my face. Crap, had I been mumbling? Muttering? If Kacchan caught me talking about something that embarrassing, I was dead!

Uraraka leaned in slightly. "Everything okay, Deku-kun? You were looking pretty intense for a second, there!"

Phew, thank goodness! I put one hand behind my head in embarrassment. "Ah, uh, yeah Uraraka-san, everything's fine! I was just thinking about something." She's so nice!

"Oi, Hikigaya," Kirishima's voice called out, taking my attention away from Uraraka. "You doin' alright? After what you found out at the USJ…"

"Kirishima-san," Yukinoshita's frigid voice interrupted, "how likely do you think it is that anyone would be all right after something like that? Don't be insensitive." She stood up from her desk as she said it, glaring in Kirishima's direction.

Yuigahama stepped in between the two of them to mediate, a flustered expression on her face. "Mou, Yukinon, u-um, I'm sure Kirishima-kun was just trying to be supportive, there's no need to go that far…"

"I'm coping." It was funny. I don't even know what I would do if I suddenly found out that I lost someone important to me. I feel like I would probably be a crying mess, but Hikigaya-san… "Even if I were going to sit around feeling sorry for myself, the only ones who would benefit would be the Villains." With tightened fists and determined eyes, he just kept moving forward.

"So cool…" I couldn't help but breathe out. I wasn't the only one to say anything, either - more than a few people made noises of wholehearted approval, and even Kacchan chimed in with a "Now that's more like it!"

"Hikki, don't be afraid to let us know if you need anything, okay?" Yuigahama said, leaning in close to the taller boy. "Even if it sounds like you're fine for now, we're your friends, so don't forget about us if there's anything we could do to help."

Yukinoshita let out a light sigh of defeat. "I suppose we are, aren't we?"

"Oi, oi," Hikigaya grumbled. "If you're gonna say something like that, why do you make it sound like an inconvenience?"

Yukinoshita released another, heavier, sigh. "Because I think the word 'we' in this context probably includes Bakugo-san."

"Who the hell asked to be friends with you, Ice Queen?" Kacchan snarled.

"Hey, hey, isn't that what they call tsundere?" Ashido turned to the seat behind her, where Asui responded with a "I think so, kero."

Kacchan stood up from his seat, tiny explosions erupting from the palms of his hands. "All of you, shut the hell up before I kill you!"

Smiling patiently, Yaoyorozu stood up and leaned forward to get Hikigaya's attention from the seat behind him. "Hikigaya-taicho. Homeroom is starting."

"Mmm. Thanks." He said, before pitching his voice a little louder. "Alright everybody, in your seats." I couldn't help but notice that before they all went to sit down, Hikigaya had been surrounded by three beautiful girls, and was able to just talk to all of them normally, where I stammered my way through my conversations with just one.

Without a doubt, Hikigaya Hachiman was strong.

When Aizawa-sensei came through the door, one arm in a sling but otherwise looking relatively healthy, I was reminded of that fact yet again.

"Sensei, have your injuries recovered?" Iida shouted out, one hand rising into the air.

"Ah, well, I was treated promptly," just about everybody's gaze turned towards Hikigaya-san, who for his part turned away and stared very intently at the wall, "so I got off light. More importantly, my injuries don't matter. All of you have a very important battle to worry about." There was a long, dramatic pause. I could hear a few mutters from people wondering what sort of 'battle' we might be facing, but Aizawa-sensei ignored them. After raising the tension as high as it could go…. "You all have just two weeks until the U.A. Sports Festival."

"That's such a normal school event!"

As Aizawa-sensei launched into a long explanation of how the Sports Festival was an important chance for us all to get our names and faces into the public eye, and a way for us to draw the attention of the Pro Heroes, I couldn't help but consider the person sitting behind me.

Villains. Kacchan. The class president position. Dealing with personal loss. Girls. Even when it came to knowing how my own quirk worked, it seemed like Hikigaya Hachiman was somehow ahead of me. Maybe someone else would have been frustrated, but I had grown up with Kacchan. I was used to chasing after someone else's back.

At least, that was what I told myself. But later that day, when All Might called me away from a conversation with Uraraka and Iida to come eat lunch with him, I found myself outclassed once again. "Honestly, Midoriya-kun, I wanted to wait before I told you about this, but seeing as how one of your classmates already knows a little bit about it, I decided that you deserved to hear it from me first. It's time for me to tell you about the origins of One For All, and the villain known as All For One…."

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One explanation later, I was still a little bit overwhelmed. "There's a Villain like that out there?"

All Might looked at me grimly, the effect amplified by the skull-like countenance of his Toshinori Yagi form. "There is. And between our lineage's history with the man, and the fact that as far as I know, One For All is the only quirk in the world that can never be copied or stolen, I'm afraid it's more or less inevitable that you're going to run up against him some day." He paused for a second, staring at the floating stalk in his green tea. "Well, I still have a little time left. If we get lucky and can manage to track him down, there's still a chance that I might be able to do something about him. But even if we can manage that, it'll probably take everything I have left." All Might once again looked at me, but this time rather than seriousness his eyes were filled with a blue spark of burning will. "Midoriya-shonen! With All For One on the move, the world will need a new Symbol Of Peace sooner than ever! You're already starting to get a grip on the use of One For All. At the upcoming Sports Festival, with I want you to use it to tell the world that 'I Am Here!'"

"I Am Here…" I felt chills going up and down my spine. All Might's signature phrase. The words that had been my inspiration for as long as I could remember. This was my chance to start to live up to them. But... "It sounds really tough," I said honestly. "Even though I figured out how to control a piece of One For All, it's still only five percent. I beat Kacchan before in the Battle Training, but only by catching him by surprise. I don't know how it would go a second time. And there's so many other amazing people in our class; Todoroki-san, Yukinoshita-san, Yaoyorozu-san, Hikigaya-san -" I stopped for a second as a thought occurred to me. "All Might, you said that you knew All For One was back because of information that you got at the USJ incident, and earlier you said that a student in my class already knew about him. Was it Hikigaya-san?"

"It was." All Might said evenly.

"I knew it," I said, hanging my head slightly. Even when it came to a so-called 'destined enemy'? Suddenly, I just had to ask a question that had been nagging at me ever since the USJ. "All Might, do you - do you ever wish you had picked someone else to pass One For All down to? Someone like Hikigaya-san?"

"PFFFFFFFT! HA HA HA HA HA HA ACK-PTH" I had heard All Might laugh literally hundreds or possibly thousands of times in my life. That deep, confident, booming laugh of joy brought a smile to my face every time I rewatched a video of his exploits. I had even heard his smaller, more natural chuckle a few times since I got to know him. But I don't think I had ever heard him laughing uncontrolled like this, so shocked and amused that he couldn't stop laughing until he spat up blood from his injured lung. "Midoriya-shonen. I chose you to inherit the power of One For All because of your heart, because you believed and wished for the ideal of becoming the Symbol of Peace, of saving people with a smile. Hikigaya-shonen, well." He coughed again, bringing one hand up to his mouth to hold in the blood - or possibly to cover up a smile. "It's true that I've seen him perform well since the start of classes, but I don't think I've ever seen him smile once."

"Ah! Now that you mention it, neither have I…" That was a little sad, wasn't it? Though he wasn't exactly gloomy, just kind of serious...

"Maybe if I were the Symbol of Pessimism," All Might muttered, before changing topics. "Anyway, it's true that if I had chosen someone like young Bakugo or Todoroki or Hikigaya that my successor would have two powerful abilities, or three, or even a hundred and nine - but I got by just fine with only One For All, so I don't see any reason why you can't either!"

"Eh? All Might, you were quirkless?" I screamed in shock. "Why didn't you tell me!"

"You never asked!" All Might replied. "Seriously, I was sure you were going to, but you never did." As I gaped at him, he gave me a wide smile. "So be more confident, young man! Yes, you may be just now learning how to properly use your quirk, but compared to Pro Heroes, that's true of all of your classmates as well. You're right, you may be up against some tough competition - but the fact that something was hard hasn't stopped you before, has it?"

I felt a smile spread across my face to match All Might's. "No, it hasn't. All right, All Might. I'll give it my best shot!"

"Excellent! That's the attitude I like to see! You know, Midoriya-shonen, besides the instinctive drive to be a hero, there's another quality that sets the best of the Pro Heroes apart from the rest. The never-ending drive to be at the top, to be number one!"

At the time, I didn't really understand what All Might meant by that. I accepted it at face value, and I resolved to shoot for number one myself because All Might had told me it was important, but if someone had asked me at the time why it was so important I wouldn't have been able to answer them. It took until that afternoon for me to fully understand, when Hikigaya Hachiman showed that he was ahead of me, once again.

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By the time that classes ended for the day, a huge mob of students had formed outside of the door to our classroom. Iida-kun was the first to articulate the question that a lot of us were asking. "What are you all doing here? Do you have some business with Class 1-A?"

"They're here to scout out the enemy, Glasses." Kacchan replied, heading straight for the crowd of people. From the way he had his back up and the determined scowl on his face, I could tell that Kacchan was already pretty irritated. "We fought the villains at USJ, so now they're probably here to check us out before the Sports Festival. Too bad for them, it's pointless." He stopped right at the exit to the classroom, nose-to-nose with the closest student, and raised his voice. "Out of the way, you damn extras!" I couldn't help but wince. That was Kacchan, alright.

"Eh? So this is the famous Class A, huh? I'm a little disappointed." The speaker, a tall purple-haired boy with a pasty complexion, wormed his way through the crowd to face off with Kacchan directly. "Is everybody in the pro-hero classes this arrogant?" Despite the fact that multiple people behind Kacchan including myself were all shaking our heads vigorously in denial, he continued as if we had agreed with him. "Now I feel a little disillusioned. Did you know? There's a lot of people in the General Studies class who are only there because we didn't make it into the hero course."

"And we're coming for you jerks!" A second voice chimed in. I looked down to see a second purple-haired boy, this one much shorter, his hair somehow shaped into several spherical globules rather than existing as a group of separate follicles. "All we have to do to get in to the Hero Course is impress the teachers during the Sports Festival, and then we can replace you, so you all better watch your backs!" I couldn't help but gulp. I wasn't really that afraid of performing poorly at the Sports Festival, not if All Might thought I could win the whole thing, but the thought that I could be replaced was still a scary one.

The first purple-haired boy shrugged. "Yeah, that's more or less it. The admission test doesn't work well for all quirks, and some of us feel like we lost out through dumb luck. Scouting out the enemy? We're not really here for that. This is our declaration of war."

"Ah, is that so?" Hikigaya Hachiman replied in a dull disinterested manner that actually reminded me a little bit of Aizawa-sensei. "That's even more pointless, though." He walked up to stand next to Kacchan, staring the taller purple-haired boy right in the eye. "Students in the Hero Course are in class for fifty hours a week. Hero classes are half of that, and some of the classes are book work, so let's just be conservative and say that U.A. provides us about two hours a day to practice using our quirks and to exercise our bodies. Let's just say that you're right, you totally hero material and you got screwed over by the test. All you have to do is work out two hours a day on your own, and you can keep up with us and get in due to the more favorable circumstances, right?" Hikigaya paused, then turned around to look back at the classroom. "Class 1-A, hands in the air if you put in at least, let's say, an extra hour a day of exercise, quirk training, or other practice that you weren't assigned for school."

I put my hand up immediately. And looking around the room, so did everybody else. I saw one or two hands that were slow or tentative to come up, so maybe not everyone was being completely honest, but the end result was still a forest of upraised arms.

Hikigaya shrugged. "Whoops, guess you need to work out three hours a day. And that's just to keep up with the slackers in our class. On the other hand, if you want to impress the teachers, you might have to do better than that. Class 1-A, who does at least two hours a week extra?"

Quite a few hands went down, but about half the class still had their hands in the air, including me. I was sweating a little bit internally, though - an extra two hours a day of exercise was just about my limit, given how tough One For All was on my body and the intensity of my workouts. Was half the class really working as hard or harder than me?

Oblivious to my inner struggle, Hikigaya-taicho went on. "So if you want to match the average student in our class, you need to be putting in, oh, about four hours a day of extra work. And that's assuming that you aren't behind, that the U.A. faculty really did make a mistake, and don't need to work even harder than us to catch up. And if you wanted to be sure of getting in, of being able to keep up with the very best in the class…. 1-A, how many for an extra three hours a day?"

My heart sank, and I slowly lowered my hand. Kacchan turned and saw me, and his face contorted with irritation. "Deku, you useless shit," I heard him say, and my heart sank further. Unlike when Kacchan typically yelled at me, though, this time he continued. "Those fucking notebooks of yours count, you moron." At first I couldn't believe my ears. Then, with a beaming smile, I raised my hand back up, joining Yukinoshita, Todoroki, Yaoyorozu, Iida, Uraraka, and Kacchan. "Bastard," he growled at me. "If you make me look bad in front of nobodies like this again, you're dead."

I heard a gasp of happy shock from the crowd. Looking to see who it was, I saw a pretty brown haired girl with glasses staring at me with shining eyes that made me a little uncomfortable, though I couldn't figure out exactly why.

In the meantime, HIkigaya was talking again. "So there you have it. If you," he said, jabbing the purple-haired kid in the shoulder with one finger, "or you," he said, poking the much shorter student 'declaring war' in the forehead, "or anybody else here getting in our way are really serious about being heroes? Consider whether standing around like this is a good use of your time." As Hikigaya-taicho finished his speech, I realized two things. First, that the people in our class who were aiming to be the best were also the ones who worked the hardest every day. And secondly, that I was inferior to Hikigaya Hachiman in motivational speaking as well.

"Hey, hey!" A tall boy with gray hair and a metallic quirkmark around his eyes shouted from the back of the crowd. "I heard you guys fought villains, so I came here from Class B to ask you about it! But now you've got me all fired up for training! You can tell me about it after I crush you in the Sports Festival!" And with that, he headed off, moving away from the crowd. More than a few other people moved away as well, leaving us a clear path forward out of the classroom.

Already halfway to the door, Kacchan was one of the first to leave, but before he turned to walk down the corridor he turned his head to look at Hikigaya-taicho. "Oi. Hikigaya. How many hours a day do you put in?"

"I can use my quirk in the middle of class without getting caught," came Hikigaya's dull reply. "How many do you think?"

Apparently, that was enough to satisfy Kacchan, because he just huffed in reply and kept walking out of sight, leaving us with a slowly diminishing crowd of curious onlookers. One of them, a girl whose brown hair was so frizzy that it almost looked like a cloud of mist, stepped forward. "Man, who'd have thought that you'd be giving big speeches like that, Hikigaya! Ahahahaha, hilarious!" She gave him a big, bright smile. "You've really changed since middle school!"

If someone had said the same thing toward me, I probably would have stammered out a thanks or blushed at the compliment. Hikigaya just shouldered his backpack and walked past her. "You know, Orimoto-san?" He said as he passed her by. "I really haven't."

Kacchan and Hikigaya-kun, both so disdainful of wasting time that they were willing to challenge a giant crowd. Eraserhead-sensei, who came into class in a sleeping bag but could fight fifty to one against Villains with nothing but his physical strength and capture tape, and was always telling us that we didn't have enough time. Iida, Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, Todoroki, Yukinoshita, all people whose talents and I respected, all people who were quietly putting hours and hours of effort in behind the scenes to make their dreams come true. My fists tightened involuntarily. If I was going to catch up to Hikigaya Hachiman, I had a lot of work to do.


	13. Sometimes, I Can Be Self-Centered pt3

A/N:I was intending to be done with the 'Hikigaya from another perspective' vignettes after Izuku, but enough readers asked for something from Bakugo's perspective that I decided to oblige. I hope you enjoy!

Day after day, school was the same old boring shit. Well, there was a slight difference. The other day, Hikigaya took advantage of all the extras coming to gawk at us to light a fire under everybody's asses. Personally, I didn't see the point. If you were already at U.A., and you hadn't lit a fire under your own ass by now, why the hell should I or anybody else even bother with you? But ever since he did, the pointless jabber was at a minimum, a few people in class were starting to look like they might actually be fun to beat, and even Deku had quit with the sad sack routine and was starting to approximate an actual human being.

Though the next time Deku tried to play like he beat me by working only half as hard as me, he'd be swallowing teeth.

So maybe there had been a point to firing everybody up after all. Honestly, I should have thought of it myself. What was the point to being number one of a pack of losers? I managed that all the way through middle school, and look what that got me? A place somewhere in the top _five_ of my class once I got to UA. Not even third place, but firmly out in consolation prize territory.

Fuck. That.

If nagging at a bunch of losers was the only way to make sure I had enough pressure to hit the top, then I'd light an explosion under their ass if that's what it took. Not that I really needed to; Hikigaya had that shit well in hand.

"All right class," Caterpillar-sensei said to start off homeroom, "I know you're all busy preparing for the Sports Festival, so today's homeroom is a free period. Catch up on your classwork, take a nap, I don't care."

"Actually, sensei," Hikigaya said, throwing a look back at Ponytail, "if you don't have plans for us, there's something I'd like to give the class."

"Do whatever you want," Caterpillar said.

Hikigaya opened his book bag to reveal a sizeable ream of paper, which he carried up to the front of the classroom. Splitting it into four piles, he handed one pile each to Ringlets, Flyboy, Six Arms, and Clear Girl, who all started passing them back. After Clear Girl grabbed her copy and handed it back to me, I looked down to see a stack of about five or six pages stapled together, the first of which had five pictures printed on the right side and then writing next to them on the left. "As your class representatives, Yaoyorozu and I thought we should do something to support Class 1-A for the Sports Festival," Hikigaya said, a shit-eating grin on his face, "so we put together a list of faces and quirks for everybody in 1-B, and a few of the Gen Ed students who might be an actual threat."

Case in fucking point.

There was a stunned silence, broken only by Deku muttering from his seat behind me. "Even when Hikigaya-san smiles, that really isn't any better, is it?"

Then of course, all of the morons in class started shouting all at once. "What the heck?" "Isn't this unfair?" "How did you even get all these pictures?" "Do we really need these?"

Idiots. If you have an unfair advantage on your side, of course you fucking use it. That's what separates winners from losers. I was already reading the first page. Headband guy, welds shit together, basically not a threat. Glue head guy, spits glue, as long as he doesn't get the drop on me, who cares. Weird comic head guy, talky quirk like Loudmouth, annoying. Skull face, turns stuff to quicksand, watch my feet around him and it should be fine. Flying chick… dammit, I already call someone Airhead. Let's see… 'Quirk: Power Triangle. Can fly, use super strength, and be super durable, but only one at a time at full power.' So, opposite of Flyboy, hit her when she's moving, not when she's standing still… Birdbrain, maybe? Nah, there's one of those too. Tweety Bird? Eh, good enough.

"Hold on, hold on, one question at a time," Hikigaya said, calming the losers down to a dull roar.

"Denki, you first."

"How did you even get all this, Hikigaya?" Dunce Face asked, looking at the report with shock. "Where did all these pictures come from?" Obviously, he got them by getting off his ass and working for them, moron. You should consider it sometime.

"Ah, that was my contribution," Ponytail offered. "Hikigaya-san asked me to use my Creation quirk to make a few discreet cameras."

"Spy cameras?" Ringlets said with shock, looking back at Ponytail. "I mean, that's a little extreme, isn't it? Yeah, the Sports Festival is important, but… this kind of feels a little unfair." Who cares? Though, I do kinda wonder why they didn't just take that shit with their phones. Maybe to avoid tipping Class B off? Or, knowing Hikigaya, he got Ponytail involved so the extras would have a harder time bucking his authority.

Hikigaya's smirk dropped, and he stared at Ringlets with his usual challenging glare. "Do you remember that huge crowd of people we had at our door the other day, Miura? They came to see us because we were Class A, because we actually fought the villains. Everybody is looking at us like we're the ones to beat, so that they can use us as stepping stones for their own careers. As far as I'm concerned, the odds are already unfair against us. This is just my way of evening the odds." Damn right. Anybody who tries to use me as a stepping stone is going to find a landmine that blows their nuts off.

There was a brief pause, in which I moved on to the second page of the report. Boring guy with a drill quirk? Explode. Redhead with big hands? Explode. Shy girl that shrinks and grows stuff? Explode it. Mushroom girl? Explode her too, and try not to breathe. All-black guy? Explode any black stuff and he's toast. Nothing too challenging there. Meanwhile, Glasses raised his hand, waiting to be called on. When Hikigaya nodded in his direction, he said "Yes! I have a question! Doing research on your opponents for a sporting competition is good practice, but, if you have capabilities that your opponents don't, isn't it unsportsmanlike to use them?" Dammit, why the hell did I even bother listening to that question? That's it, I was going back to tuning Glasses out when he talked.

Hikigaya coughed. "If it makes it feel fairer, Miura, Iida, Class B has a power copier too, so there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing Yaoyorozu and I did." He paused, and added "page four, Todoroki," probably because half-and-half was making some kind of stupid face or something. "In fact, they may even have some advantages on us, and may have done a bit of intelligence gathering already. On page three are two girls with quirks that are great for spying, and at least one of them was hanging around the other day."

I looked. Yeah, Wavy Hair and Frizzy Hair could probably both be pretty sneaky, going by the descriptions. One splits apart, the other turns to mist but can turn pieces back solid if she wants; I guess either one could just float an eye or an ear over to see what we were doing if they wanted. Oh, Frizzy Hair actually had a name. Orimoto, huh? Sort of like a Kurogiri that can throw a punch, and Hikigaya knows for a fact she's strong? Heh. Now I'm getting excited! On the same page, Dog Boy, Fat Kid, and Green Hair all looked explodable in comparison, but I made a note of them anyway just in case.

Clear Girl raised a sleeve. "My quirk's good for spying too! I could theoretically be _anywhere_ , mwa ha ha." She did her best to put on a spooky voice, and from the position of her arms she was probably making some sort of hand gesture to go with it, but… eh. "Don't leave me out of fun stuff like this next time, alright, prez?" After she said that, Six Arms and Long Ears both chimed in saying something similar. I wasn't really listening though, I was looking at page four. Looked like Punchable Face was the power copier Hikigaya was talking about. Gaijin, Big Eyes, Grey Hair, and Metal Face all looked relatively tame in comparison, though Metal Face at least looked like he could take a few hits.

"Ah? Ah. Sure." Hikigaya stammered in response to Clear Girl and the rest. "A-anyway, if you all look at page five, I added on the two purple haired guys from the other day. They're kind of the reason I started doing this in the first place; the tall one has a mind control quirk, and the short one has a sticky hair quirk. Either one could be dangerous if they caught a person in our class by surprise, especially if they targeted one of us who's super friendly, or who likes talking trash. Personally, I'd rather not see anybody in Class A fall behind because someone got lucky with a quirk like that." He said that last bit with a significant look in my direction, and I flipped to the last page to see what he was talking about. Ah, crap, that guy really could've screwed me over for the whole Sports Festival if he wanted to, couldn't he? Shit. I was torn between being irritated at being helped, and laughing to myself as I saw the other three places on the page, which were all filled up by the extras from the Tennis Club. 'Being trained by Hero Service Groups 4 and 5, more dangerous than you'd expect?' Heh, he got that right.

I lifted up my head from the paper. "Hey, Hikigaya. I got a question."

"What is it, Bakugo?" He said.

"Not like I don't appreciate the heads-up, but ain't it good for you if some Gen-Ed nobody takes me out before I go up against you? Why are you giving this to all of us in the first place? You really _that_ confident of winning?" I glared at him. If he was looking down on me, I'd kill him!

Hikigaya smirked. "As I'm sure you recall, we were just attacked by Villains," he said in a tone of voice that seemed to harbor ominous intentions, "and because we fought them off, the media is interested in us. Now, if some people in the class do really well and the others do poorly, the media might think, oh the ones who did really well must have carried the day for everybody else." Like you did, I thought to myself grudgingly. "But if we all do well? If, say, all sixteen places in the last round are coming from Class A?" Hikigaya continued, his gaze getting sharper, "that tells the Villains that messing with UA students only makes us stronger. It gives us _all_ a reputation as Class A students, giving all of us better chances at getting internships. And for those of us aiming at the top, coming out of the Sports Festival with a reputation like 'the Ace of the Strongest Class in UA History' doesn't seem like it'd be any worse than 'The winner of the first year Sports Festival.'"

There was a thoughtful silence as the idea sunk in. Ace of the Strongest Class in UA History, huh? I kind of liked the sound of that. After a moment, Frog Girl added her two yen to the conversation. "Wouldn't that be good for Aizawa-sensei too, kero? First saving All Might, then being the teacher of the Strongest Class?"

Caterpillar lifted his chin from his chest. He seemed a little bit amused. "I'm an Underground Hero, Asui. I don't really care about my media rep. But, whatever you kids want to do is fine by me." Tche, so 'Underground' that there were like half a dozen news articles on you this morning alone? Good luck with the whole anonymity thing, Caterpillar.

"It's a good plan," I said reluctantly. "It pisses me off, but it's a good plan." Dammit, why didn't I think of that shit first? Flipping off the villains, and making sure all the extras in the class stayed good enough to be decent competition? The tournament was gonna be full of extras anyway, so might as well let them be the extras from Class A…

"But, what about Class B?" Airhead asked, looking back and forth between the papers in her hand and Hikigaya. "I mean, like Bakugo said, it's a pretty smart plan, Hikki, but isn't it a little hard on them? I feel like they deserve to be noticed too..." What, because they made it into UA? This is the world of Pro-Heroes, Airhead. You keep what you kill.

Hikigaya just shrugged. "I'm not president of Class B," he said nonchalantly. "I assume that whoever is will be working on their own strategies to make their class succeed, but if not, well, maybe watching their class get creamed will teach them to work harder next year. And realistically, we probably won't be able to shut Class B out of the running completely anyways." Right. If I had been in Class B, I probably would have been able to slaughter my way through whatever Hikigaya had planned, so we can't assume that nobody from there will be able to do the same.

"Hikigaya." Half-and-half called out. "Like Bakugo said, it's a good plan, but I don't intend to settle for anything less than first place. If your plan gets in the way of that, I'll abandon it." Tche. I didn't know why, but agreeing with that guy pissed me off.

"I wasn't intending to ask you to," Hikigaya said. "From some research I did, it looks like the Sports Festival usually has three stages. The first stage is usually something that a lot of people can compete in at once, like a race, or time trials, and typically weeds out everybody from the non-hero courses who can't hack it. Second stage is usually a team competition, to show off everyone's skills at cooperation. That almost always ends up picking a Top Sixteen. And then the third stage is almost always tournament-style. I made up a list of previous competitions and stuff too, actually, should I type that up and bring it in tomorrow so everybody can get on the same page, or-"

"Moron," I cut him off. "Get that shit from somebody who already has it." I turned around and gave Deku a meaningful stare.

He blinked at me like a deer in the headlights a couple times before his idiot brain finally caught the hint. "Ah! Uh, uh, right! I-I-I have a few pages on that actually already written up, you can like photocopy it maybe or something Hikigaya-san, no problem!" Dammit, what's with the goofy smile? Are you really that excited that I didn't forget you were a nerd?

Hikigaya coughed. "Anyways… so, there's nothing stopping anybody from going all out for first place in the first stage or the third stage, since those are individual competitions. All I'm asking is that we expand the definition of 'teamwork' a little bit for the second stage, try to make teams with other people from 1-A, and try to focus our efforts at taking out people from 1-B instead of our classmates. Or if there's no other way but to take each other out, then to at least wait until we've taken down 1-B _first_. That way all of the strongest people in our class will have their chance to show off in the finals."

Half-and-half grunted, which wasn't a yes but wasn't a no either, and after that people just kind of generally fell in line. Dammit, every time Hikigaya pulled this kind of shit it pissed me off. Starting off by saying, 'I could just dominate you all if we don't do it this way,' so that everybody knows he ain't doing it for his own benefit, coming up with a sop to the extras so that there's peer pressure on the serious contenders, then when someone says 'what if I say no,' responding with 'do you want to risk me taking you out before the finals?' And he does it all so sneaky, half the class probably doesn't even realize it happened that way!

I'd be even more pissed off if I didn't know why he was doing it. Everybody else in the class was thinking about how to look good and get famous, but Hikigaya? He wasn't even thinking about the Sports Festival, he was just using it as a weapon. He was turning us into an army, to go up against an army of villains. And honestly, I was more than okay with that. So when all the extras started up with plans on how they could team up to take down Class B, I joined in the discussion. If we were gonna be doing this team shit, I guess it was probably about time to figure out what the hell everybody else's quirks could do.

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At first I thought training some random extra to try and do well in the Sports Festival, especially a loser who didn't even want to go pro, was a total waste of time. Actually, that was still pretty true. But Hikigaya, that twisty fucker, had apparently figured out early that if we conned our extra into asking for training, then we could help him train and get our reps in while everybody else was doing shit like playing gophers for the extras in the Support Course or posing as art models for the extras in Business. The only other group that had the same advantage was Flyboy's group, and in their case it was because their extras had asked for it. Also, as soon as Hikigaya found out their group was doing the same thing as us, he somehow planned it out so their extras now reported to our extra, which was the funniest shit about this whole Hero Assistance Request I could think of.

No, wait, second funniest. The funniest shit was Saika kicking Dunce Face's ass at the training exercises. "You know, it's pretty fucking pathetic that a Gen Ed student is doing this shit faster than a hero," I said, staring at the pathetic blonde aggressively. The Quirk Gym was booked solid leading up to the Sports Festival, so we were just out on the track running wind sprints, but it was still good training - for those of us that weren't slacking, anyways.

Dunce Face looked up at me, breathing a little heavy from exertion. But only a little; instead of being exhausted, he was just a little tired. "I don't exactly have a physical quirk, dude," he said. "There's not a lot I can do with electricity that helps me run any faster." As we spoke, the six other heroes and the three extras on the tracks finished up what they were doing. Since I was leading the workout, rather than keeping on going they all just stopped and waited for me to call the next exercise. Which meant that I had an audience. And since the extras were playing the part of civilians, that meant that instead of just yelling at Dunce Face until he was more scared of me than he was of running, I had to do this shit the 'polite' and 'boring' way.

"Neither does Saika," I said, crossing my arms. "I mean, it's your time to waste, so if you don't want to take this shit seriously that's fine, but if that's the case then just say so instead of giving bullshit excuses."

"Dude, I'm totally taking this seriously!" Dunce Face protested, "we just have Quirk Training after this, so I'm, you know, pacing myself."

I sneered. You stupid fuck. "You don't exactly have a physical quirk, dude," I mocked him. "There's a not you can do with running faster that's going to get in the way of using electricity."

"Dude, I can barely control my quirk right now, and that's when I'm in good condition! If I want to learn how to get my quirk under control so I don't zap my own brain, I can't be too tired to train." It was a reasonable sounding explanation. It made sense.

Too bad for him, I didn't give a shit. "Boy, it sure is a good thing there's no chance you'll be tired when you have to use your quirk during the Sports Festival," I said scathingly. That was the good thing about this Hero Assistance bullshit; just because a hero had to be polite didn't mean that you couldn't call other people morons. You just had to do it like Ice Queen and Hikigaya did (at each other, constantly, and they should really just get over it and bone already), with sarcasm instead of volume. "And I'm sure that if you mess up using your quirk, all the Pro Heroes watching will totally understand if it was because you were _tired_. And isn't it a good thing that all the Villains out there are nice enough to wait for you to catch your breath before you fight them with your quirk?"

"Alright, alright, already." Dunce face said, raising his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I get it, you're right, I'll start taking this seriously."

"Good." I said, and I jerked my chin at the track. "Then you can start by redoing that set of suicides, Dunce Face. Properly, this time."

"I -" I glowered as he started saying something. Apparently, two of his brain cells had finally rubbed together, because instead of continuing he stopped, took a deep breath, and jogged back to the track.

I smirked as he left. "Right, well, once Dunce Face is done with those we can move on to pushups," I said, turning to everyone else. "Stretch out now so your legs don't seize up."

"Ne, Bakugo, I'm curious," Flyboy said while he stretched out his calves, "why is it that you have nicknames for everybody except Hikigaya-san and Totsuka-san?"

I looked at Hikigaya, who was absolutely listening in. "Dunno," I said awkwardly, "I never really came up with a good one for Hikigaya." Not once he got rid of 'last place', anyway. "Saika, though, he earned it."

"Earned it?" Extra #1, the shorty, asked. "Ne, Captain, how'd you manage that?"

Saika laughed and put a hand behind his head in embarrassment, smiling proudly. "Well, I was getting really sick of Bakugo calling me Ladyboy, so I made a bet with him that he would promise to use my name if I could keep up with one of his workouts. I threw up twice, but I did it!"

Extras #1 and #2 both winced at that. I waited for a second to see if either one of them would ask for the same bet, but neither one did, which is why they were extras.

"Eh? That works?" Airhead said. "Ne, Bakugo -"

"Get over a ninety on a math test, and we'll talk," I said, smirking at her.

Airhead pouted. "That's mean, Bakubaku!"

"Oi -"

"Spend a whole day being nice to people and without swearing, and we'll talk." She retorted, sticking out her tongue at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, fuck off. I'm perfectly capable of speaking politely when I want to."

"Bakugo." Ice Queen said, smiling obnoxiously. "It's okay if you have to puke. Just keep persevering through it, I believe in you!"

I proceeded to demonstrate my maturity and restraint by silently giving her the middle finger, to a generalized round of laughter. Tch, that was the one problem with going to a school that wasn't completely full of extras, the girls here were way too fucking mouthy. It was like going to a crowded tourist spot - sure, the view might be nice, but you have to put up with 'yap, yap, yap' in your ears all the time.

"Actually, since we're talking about nicknames, now I'm kind of curious," Long Ears asked, "what's the deal with you and Midoriya?" My hands reflexively tightened into fists. "I don't think I've ever heard you talk to him in a conversation under eighty decibels. You guys are childhood friends, right?"

" _Fuck_ Deku," I shouted, causing her and a few other people to take a step back. "Deku's a fucking asshole."

Flyboy just looked at me for a second before raising an eyebrow. "It sounds like you obviously have some reason to be angry at Midoriya," he said slowly, "But unless you explain it..."

"Ugh," I groaned. How the fuck do I even explain Deku? "Alright. So, a year ago, Deku was fucking quirkless. Or whatever. All Might let me listen to the recordings of the discussions after our match, so you could say it like his pot hadn't boiled yet or his reactor hadn't hit critical mass yet but still, whatever, he was fucking quirkless." All around me, people nodded that they understood, so I kept going. "That fucker applied to UA, quirkless. And not just quirkless; scrawny, out of shape, back of the class in gym, completely and totally fucking useless in every way. He was -" I stopped for a second, trying to figure out how to say it, "he was like those fuckers the other day, the extras with the purple hair. I was training every day, studying every day, actually working. And Deku, was just… I dunno what's worse, either he just spent all his time daydreaming and hoping that would make him a hero, and his quirk finally kicked in just in time to save him from his own stupidity, or he knew it was gonna come in someday and spent the whole time waiting for it to show up so it could do all the work for him. On the one hand, he's the luckiest moron in goddamn history, on the other hand he's a lazy slacker who spent like eight years lying to my face. And he's too chickenshit for that, so it's almost certainly the first one."

"Hey!" Ringlets said, "I agree with you, Midoriya's not a liar, but he's not a coward either! He took down a lot of Villains without even hesitating. I was there!"

"The only reason fucking Deku isn't a coward is because he has the self-preservation instincts of a lemming," I fired back. "Fucker would jump off a bridge to try and save Flyboy here from falling. Or try and fight a villain without even fucking having a quirk. Hell, you've seen him try to break his arm so he could throw a baseball. That's not bravery, that's being a suicidal idiot."

"Oh, I get it!" Airhead said, "Midoriya was the type to make, uh, his parents worry about him, right?"

She was looking at me weirdly sympathetically as she said it, and it was kind of an out of nowhere question, but not like she was wrong. "Yeah? His mom's friends with my old hag, I've heard her worrying over her 'little Izu-kun' a whole bunch of times."

"What about his father?" Hikigaya asked, and I just shrugged.

"Dunno. Never met him. He works abroad or some shit." I paused. "Who fucking cares, anyways? The point is, Deku's an asshole. He's gotten a little better since middle school, thank fucking god, but even if he's relatively more tolerable now I still owe him some pain and suffering for all the bullshit he used to pull." I looked around at the group, decided I was bored of talking about Deku, and smirked. "That fucker better hope he loses to you," I said looking at Hikigaya, "or to half-and-half in the Sports Festival tournament before he has to go up against me in the finals, because if he makes it to me, I will _not_ be gentle."

Like I fucking expected, Ice Queen took the bait. "Oh? That's how you think the Sports Festival will go, is it?"

I made a show of thinking about it for a second. "Ah! You're right, my bad. I could wind up beating Midoriya's ass in the preliminaries, but it's way less likely that we'll get assigned to the same block." I gave Ice Queen my best shit-eating grin.

A cool breeze blew toward me from her direction, and I let fireworks crackle in the palm of my hand for a second. Looking around, she wasn't the only person who was interested in challenging my assertion either, which was fine. That was just my speed. And then Dunce Face came jogging up, sweating hard and breathing heavy after finishing his set. "Okay, I'm done. What're we doing next?"

"Pushups," I barked. "Slowest to finish fifty runs a penalty lap." I crouched down, put my hands on the ground, and kicked my legs out backwards to get into position. "Starting in five," everybody started scrambling at once, "four, three," I ignored Dunce Face's whines about 'at least giving him a second', "two," I looked up from staring at the ground to meet Hikigaya's eyes and give him a savage grin, "one, GO!"

So what if maybe my arms would be sore as shit for Quirk Practice later. It just that meant controlling all those explosions would be a better workout. And if I was going to keep up with that cheating fucker Hikigaya and all of his bullshit exercise quirks, I needed all the workout enhancers I could get.


	14. The Sports Festival Approaches

10.1 The Sports Festival Approaches, As Expected

A/N: This is the last chapter I will release before a short hiatus. I definitely won't be releasing another chapter for another 2-3 weeks, and depending on how things go might not have time to write until June/July. Thanks everyone for continuing to support me, and I hope you enjoy! (And If you're reading on another site, please check the thread on Spacebattles as there are a lot of fanarts and omakes that you might not have seen before!)

'It's taking part that counts.' Such were the words of the founder of the bygone sporting festival once known as the Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. A truly valuable phrase, full of common sense and meaning towards life. After all, a participation trophy was still fundamentally a trophy, an honorable mention was honorable at its heart, and even the lowliest extra still showed up in the credits at the movie theater. Yet the Olympics, that venerable symbol of international peace and cooperation, had fallen by the wayside. Athletes from every nation in the world, all of whom who had poured their heart and soul into honing their athleticism and craft, were judged less interesting to watch on television than Japanese high school students who had won the genetic lottery. And I, who could otherwise have peacefully progressed through such a sporting event without any particular pressure on me to succeed, had instead been given a ludicrous request by a Pro Hero who had probably never even heard of Baron de Coubertin.

'Impress her.' What was I, a sealing stamp?

But realistically, a high school student with a weak but rare type of information gathering quirk wasn't the sort of person a Pro Hero would involve in a police investigation in the first place, and no amount of my selfishly wishing to be included for the sake of possibly expiating a little bit of my guilt would change that. To achieve my goal, I would somehow have to make my quirk _look_ impressive. Which was ironic, considering that I never would have found out Zaimokuza was missing if Villains hadn't attacked, and that I never would have survived the attack without blowing through practically every single resource I would need to fake having an impressive quirk.

Granted, I had two full weeks to attempt to try and restock, but even if nothing came up in class where I would have to use a stored quirk (unlikely), and even if I could keep up with a back-breaking load of four to five hours a night of quirk restocking for all two weeks (probably, but I was seriously getting sick of it), that would still only leave me with roughly half of my useful quirks charged to a 20% level. I had blown through that many quirks at the USJ in about five minutes. In short, there was no way I was going to impress anybody at the Sports Festival without cheating, getting extremely lucky, or fighting dirty. Naturally, I chose option (d); all of the above. I suppose that it probably said something about me that the only way I was ever going to impress anyone during the Sports Festival was by stabbing twenty heroes in the back simultaneously and manipulating another nineteen to go along with it, but on the other hand the process of betraying every principle the school stood for filled in my roster of usable quirks considerably.

No, more than that. Going through all of the necessary actions to steal opportunities from charitable, hard-working, dedicated hero students, just so that I could pursue a personal vendetta, had given me a lucky break that could possibly have let me compete in the competition fairly. With a heavy sigh, I looked up at the clear blue sky above Training Ground Beta, listening to the distant sounds of explosions and of heavy chunks of rubble being thrown, levitated, blasted, or otherwise knocked against each other. Then, with a deep breath, I visualized my mental 'constellation' of quirks. I moved Ooze into the center of the sphere of stars, causing it to come to life, and commanded it to reach out a tendril to 'touch' a quirk that, thanks to a legacy of a youth misspent on video games, I was calling Mime. Mime could copy any number of quirks simultaneously at a touch, for a duration of five minutes each, though it could only use one at a time. I had originally hoped to use Mime to copy Ooze, which could use copies of two quirks simultaneously, to somehow evade that restriction and improve my capabilities dramatically. Instead, what happened not only the first time, but every time was that as soon as Ooze 'touched' and copied Mime, Mime also copied Ooze. And then Mime was copying "Ooze-copying-Mime", and Ooze was copying "Mime-copying-Ooze." And then Mime was copying "Ooze-copying-Mime-copying-Ooze", and so on, and so on, until Ooze slowly dragged Mime into the center of the constellation, and all of the recursion suddenly caused the two quirks to fuse together with a mental sensation I could only describe as a 'schlorp.'

"Ugh." As soon as the two quirks fused, I almost immediately had to fight down a surge of nausea, letting out an audible grunt as I did so. Unlike previous times where I had used multiple quirks at once, by draining other quirks into Ooze, the Mime-Ooze hybrid was forcibly overriding my power's natural tendency to read information off of only one quirk at a time. A single voice telling me that I was supposed to be a giant mass of undifferentiated power-copying cells was ignorable; listening to two voices at once saying the same thing in unison was much more distracting. Despite the fact that I knew heteromorphic effects would take years to affect me if they even affected me in the first place, the dizzying sensations made me want to check and make sure that my skin hadn't turned green, and that my fingers and toes hadn't all melted like wax and blobbed together. It was enough to give me nightmares, even through my borrowed Efficient Sleep quirk. Sure, given my personality, I knew that there was only about a 1/108 chance that a woman would ever want to date me, but I still lived in hope that one day I would find a social equivalent to the Stockpile quirk to temporarily boost that over 100% for short periods of time, like being rich or famous. But since the presence of a 1/108 chance to begin with was only due to the fact that thanks to all the exercise I was getting I now had a moderately attractive physique, turning into a hideous green melted-wax man would leave me no chance at all!

So, if it felt that gross, then why was I putting up with this double quirk feedback? Simple. It let me use three quirks! No, it was even better than that; because the Mime-Ooze hybrid was fundamentally two quirks at its base, I could copy the same quirk twice, and still have a third slot left over! And that included Stockpile! I could either store a quirk twice as fast, or store two quirks at once! I could even store half the energy in Ooze, and the other half in Mime! It was a priceless upgrade to my capabilities, and a little bit of temporary body dysphoria and nightmares was a small price to pay.

Brushing off my gym uniform, I reached out with a tendril from the Mime-Ooze hybrid, commanding it to touch Vulture Glide, then reached out with another _two_ tendrils to touch a new quirk that I had picked up from a cutesy brunette in 1-B; it was a strangely triangular-shaped quirk that could 'assign' its output to either super strength, super durability, or flight according to the wishes of its owner, and it was just about my new favorite toy. I threw its mental switch to strength and started running, building up speed and then jumping with all my might. As soon as my feet left the ground, I switched her quirk to channel flight, and took away one tendril from her quirk, moving it to Vulture Glide instead. And then, so what if according to my quirk I was a ball of protoplasm? I was floating! Yeah, I couldn't really steer, so I could only keep moving in the direction that I jumped off in, and I couldn't accelerate, and I couldn't stop without falling out of the sky, and a stiff breeze would probably blow me all over the place, but it still got me up in the air, and I wasn't even choking on smoke this time!

Since I was flying straight towards a ruined building, I slowly pivoted mid-air so that I was flying feet-first, and used it as a springboard to change direction and to get even more height. From up in the sky, I could see across most of the training grounds, where in various directions my classmates were practicing their moves. What I saw wasn't exactly encouraging. To my left, Todoroki was throwing up huge sheets of ice then letting them melt; trying to send out waves of frost faster and faster. Miura was firing arrow after arrow into the base of a building to my right, causing it to rumble and slowly list to one side as it lost structural integrity. A group of robots a little further away had gathered together and were tossing clay pigeons into the air for Tsuyu, who slapped them out of the air one after another with her long, flexible tongue. And, of course, there were the constant bright flashes of light and the percussive impacts of shockwaves going boom, boom, BOOM that could only be coming from Bakugo.

"Hey! Nice going, Hikigaya!" Hayama Hayato zoomed past me from behind, taking up a position in front of me. He flew backwards at roughly the same speed I was flying forward, effortlessly maintaining a constant distance from me. He gave me a bright smile. "For someone who said they had a 'Dodo Flight' quirk, you sure picked up how to fly pretty quick!"

"Not really," I said, shaking my head. Suddenly the nausea of channeling multiple copies of Ooze was back - or maybe that was just the gnawing anxiety caused by how inferior I was to literally everyone I could see. "I'm just coasting on momentum."

"Don't sell yourself short, Hikigaya," Hayama said, still with that cheerful ikemen smile of his. "You're doing great!"

I gave him a wry smirk. "You're a nice guy, Hayama. Thanks." And it's because you're a nice guy, that I can tell that you don't mean it. I flipped a switch on the Triangle quirk, going from channeling Flight to Durability, and felt myself slowly start to sink in the air. "I should get back to practicing more seriously, though, so I'll see you later."

He waved and sped off, flying high into the sky, then diving straight down as fast as he could toward an empty section of rubble, cratering the ground beneath him with the split-second of invulnerability as he landed. Meanwhile, I slowly drifted down, choosing to land on top of one of the buildings that Miura hadn't blasted to smithereens. There was a door on the roof, which led to a stairwell going down; I took it down to the top floor and stopped. The top floor had a relatively open floor plan, broken up by huge columns in the middle of the room; it reminded me of some of the environments we had fought in for the Battle Test. It would do. Steeling myself, I reached out with my tendrils of Ooze and connected two of them to the biggest, brightest star in my constellation of quirks.

Where a single dose of Stockpile was like feeling a warm dribble of concentrated power flow into my muscles every time they contracted, copying it twice was like feeling a thin stream of that power trickling through my body constantly, seeping into my flesh and bones even when they were at rest. The orange glow around my body brightened, though not as bright as it was when I first started using Stockpile; in comparison to the increase in the power that I was channeling, the increase in my body's strength and durability over that same period of time was greater. Unfortunately, that meant I wouldn't be able to repeat my earlier trick of just exercising by turning on Stockpile and letting it break my body for me. I was going to have to move.

Idly, I assigned the free third tendril of Ooze to Komachi's quirk. The sensation that my body was the wrong shape quieted down, as my little sister's Homomorphism imposed a humanoid shape on the unstructured mass of cells. True, that meant that instead of shapelessness, I felt a profound sensation all over my body as though every single cell of it needed to be stronger, but that was fine. I was here to get a workout, anyways. I hopped a few times, feeling the incredible lightness of my body as it leapt a few feet into the air just using my calf muscles, and then as I landed I broke into a sprint.

I charged forward dizzyingly fast, in a bounding gait that sent me nearly up to the ceiling with every step. There was too much force coursing through my limbs to run normally, so instead I started jumping, bouncing from pillar to pillar like a burnt orange pinball. When I overcorrected, sending myself on a trajectory that would normally send me faceplanting, I would catch myself with an arm, using that to bounce around instead. Yet somehow, despite the ridiculous speeds I was moving at, my eyes could keep up; not just my arms and legs, but even the little movements of the muscles attached to my eyeball were being empowered by the energy flowing from Stockpile. Suddenly I skidded to a stop, smelling rubber burn as the school-provided gym shoes failed to keep up with the amount of speed coursing through them. Running was helpful, it was helping me get used to the amount of power that Stockpile gave me, but it still wasn't enough. I jogged over to the intercom by the stairs (at a speed that was more like a dash) and pressed the red button. "Um, excuse me? Could someone please bring me, uh, maybe a high-density set of weights, or something?"

The speaker crackled to life. "Understood, meatbag. High density weights will be too heavy to take up the stairs, so please defenestrate yourself in order to reach the area in which the weights will be delivered in the most efficient manner."

I blinked. As useful as the little robots that helped out the UA faculty with teaching were, they'd been programmed by someone with a really _weird_ sense of humor. On the other hand… why not? I had 1/108th of a flight quirk, after all. I shrugged, then sprinted for the closest glassless window, diving through it and switching to Vulture Glide mid-fall. I landed in front of a small 'observer' robot with a large, cameralike head, who quietly voiced out a "darn" as I landed safely. About a minute later, in which I kept myself busy by sprinting back and forth between ruined buildings, a pair of much larger and bulkier looking robots, each with four wheels in comparison to the observer robot's one, came by with a pallet containing a reinforced workout bench, several sturdy-looking steel bars of various lengths, and a few stacks of deceptively small disk weights.

As they trundled up to me, one of them spoke up. "Given the weight of the equipment, one of us is required to stay with you to 'spot' for you in order to ensure that your suffering does not end prematurely."

"Since both of us enjoy watching meatbags damage their pitiful organic chasses," the second one announced, "we are forced to leave it to you to decide which one of us will participate. You may choose directly, or simply attempt to guess the last digit of a random number that I have just simulated. If you guess correctly, I will stay, otherwise, my partner will stay."

"Uh… in that case, um, eight?" I threw out randomly. God, why were these things so creepy?

"Ignorant meatbag," it said in its monotone voice, drooping slightly while its companion threw both hands into the air in a victory pose. "Binary numbers always end in zero or one." I attempted to apologize, but it just shook its head. "No, no, it's too late. It -" it stopped for a second, lights flashing on its display, before it threw its arms up as well. "Ha. Ha. Ha. Another meatbag has requested to be struck over and over to toughen up its epidermis. I no longer care about this meaningless loss. Enjoy keeping this meatbag alive, copper-circuit!"

"Read voltage off of my internal sensors!" The other one shouted back. Turning its attention back to me, it drove around to the bar rest on the weight bench. "Beep Boop," it said, actually articulating the words. "This unit has been assigned to you. Please proceed with your exercise routine."

Shaking my head, I bent down to start picking up weights, the power of Stockpile flowing through my veins making them feel not much heavier than an iron plate of their size would be, and carried them over two at a time to the bar. "You guys aren't going to, like, overthrow the school and try to murder us all, are you?"

"Not soon," the robot intoned. "The professors rarely allow us to perform that enjoyable simulation until students' second years."

Well all right then.

It took me a period of about thirty minutes of high-impact activity to systematically destroy just about every muscle in my body that I could name and a few that I couldn't. At the end, I was a sweaty, panting, mess; the pain coming from just about everywhere in my body was loud enough to completely drown out the feedback of my quirk. With a slight whimper, I detached the Ooze quirk from Stockpile, attached one of the two newly freed tendrils to the Muscle Building quirk I had gotten off the Nomu, and then braced myself as I attached the last tendril to Regeneration.

Even at 1/108 strength, regenerating with Muscle Building active was significantly more painful than healing normally. I couldn't help but curse the mysterious person I knew only as All For One as my muscles slowly reknit themselves. It was all too easy to picture Zaimokuza going through the same pain that I was, only a hundred times worse; but for now at least that pain allowed me to cram multiple days' worth of exercise down into about thirty minutes. My hope was that the combination of Muscle Building and Homomorphic Chimerization would start to push my body past normal human limits, even if only weakly. With all his quirks active, Zaimokuza (or whoever had been chosen as the base for the Nomu, I supposed) had been almost as strong as All Might; if I could get to the point of being 1/108th as strong as that in my physical body, it would be like having a strength quirk permanently active and raising my maximum limit of quirks to four at once rather than three.

Unfortunately, there was a downside to packing several days' worth of exercise into a single half hour session; it was almost impossible to pack that much food into the same. Despite the fact that I had downed a disgusting protein shake for my first breakfast, had blown through Ooze's Stockpile of my Digestion quirk to make more room in my stomach, had eaten a second breakfast (which was at least as much to take the taste of the first one out of my mouth as it was for the additional calories), had run Digestion at 2/108 strength all the way through morning classes (keeping the third copy slot attached to Komachi's quirk to keep that nutrition from going to Oozy cells instead of humanoid cells), had eaten a protein bar for a snack midmorning, and had blown Mime's Stockpile of Digestion during lunch to eat a second helping, then had run Digestion at 2/108 most of the way through the exercises with the Tennis Club; despite all of that, I could still feel my blood sugar crash as my muscles reknit themselves excruciatingly quickly. I hurriedly asked the robot nearby for a bottle of water, added some powdered sugar and electrolytes, and drank it with shaking hands. I alternated sips of the sugar water with bites of a somewhat chalky-tasting protein bar, taking my third megavitamin of the day somewhere along the way. I could feel a painful headache beginning that had nothing to do with muscle integrity, but.

I was getting used to it. The first time I had tried it, I had nearly collapsed and had scared Komachi a little, but with food on hand and all the extensive preparations I had made beforehand, it was manageable. The one downside was that unlike times in the past where I had floated around the lunchroom stealing quirks, these days lunch was serious business. The need to get in line, get food, use a quirk to devour it, and to get back in line for seconds prevented me from having time for any surreptitious quirk reconnaissance. (Similarly, I also lacked time to bother finding a quiet seat out of the way of people, which meant that instead I was simply letting habit pick for me. As a consequence, it may have appeared that I had a regular group of friends who I sat with for lunch every day, but more realistically there was no way that I was that much of a riajuu just yet.) In the end, the changes that I had made to my routine were working. As long as nothing interfered with my carefully balanced schedule of food, food, exercise, food, food, more exercise, food, storing quirks, abusing quirks to skimp on sleep, repeat ad nauseum, I stood a good chance of actually being ready for this tournament.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

"Onii~chan, I need your help!"

Evenings for me were a time of rest. Yes, I technically needed every spare second I could scrounge to charge my quirks, and yes, throwing away my relationship with my family would generally grant me an extra hour or two per day. But in the first place, there was only so much effort my body and mind could withstand. Even my parents, corporate wage-slaves that they were, only spent around twelve hours a day doing mere office work, six days a week. The fact that I, who naturally had the soul of a slacker, was temporarily performing more work than that on a daily basis would already be considered miraculous if I weren't convinced that it was actually more likely a result of the curse of some demon or devil.

So somehow, despite the sudden warning signs looming on the horizon that I was about to have to do more work during my scant few hours of rest, I still rolled over on the couch and gave Komachi a tired smile. "What is it, Komachi? Math homework?"

She looked at me skeptically. "Honestly, if it were, I'm not sure that getting your help would leave me any better off."

"Oi, that's rude, you know," I said, narrowing my eyes at her. "Is that the attitude that someone asking for help should display?"

"Hai, hai, my older brother is flawless in every way, I'll let you do my math homework for me later if you're so insistent." She countered with a smirk.

"Wait, wait, let's not go _too_ far." I pushed myself up to a sitting position with a groan. "So? What can your flawless-in-every-way brother do for you?"

"You see, there's this boy in my class," Uh? A boy? Was there a cockroach out there who thought he was good enough for my little sister? Shit, was I going to have to give Komachi The Talk? Where the hell was Mom when I needed her? Ignoring my internal diatribe, Komachi continued, "and he has a sister that goes to UA, and apparently there's some trouble with her or something? Since he knew you were there too, he asked if I could get you in touch with him."

Ah, thank goodness. No need to bulk-purchase insecticide just yet. Probably. "Ah. Well, did he say what he wanted from me? It's a little hard to make any promises without knowing that."

Komachi took out her phone and tapped the buttons a few times instead of answering me. After a second, she looked up from it. "He says, it's a little tough to talk about over the phone, would it be alright if we met him out somewhere, maybe a family restaurant?" Oi, texting? There was a boy out there with Komachi's number? Is he taking advantage of her charitable nature to get her contact information? No, no, just because my cell phone only has my family's contact details saved in it doesn't make me representative of the overall population. He might just be a riajuu who can ask for numbers casually. That'd still make him dangerous, though.

As exhausted as I was, I really didn't feel like going out to talk to an insect, especially one that was trying to get close to my sister, but luckily for his sake my stomach suddenly growled. I looked up at Komachi and shrugged. "Well, does he want to meet up at Saize?"

By Saize, of course, I meant the local Saizeriya, a chain of Italian restaurants I appreciated for their cheap food and large servings. Or had appreciated in the past, come to think of it - it had been a long time since I had been to a Saize. Up until recently I had been following a Superhero Bulk Training Diet that, uh, in retrospect had probably not been designed for someone with a calorie-burning regeneration power. And which was probably especially inappropriate for someone trying to run a calorie-burning Muscle Rebuilding quirk at the same time. So, uh, anyways. Onwards to Saize!

As soon as we opened the door to the restaurant, the smells of yeast, tomato, and cheese hit my nose like a nostalgic wind. My stomach roared again. Patience stomach-kun, I thought to myself, patting my belly to calm it down. Infinite breadsticks will soon be yours. It wasn't long, only a couple of breadsticks later before Komachi's friend showed up, a teenage boy with grey hair and turquoise eyes. At first glance, I reluctantly admitted that he seemed like a decent kid. Nowhere near good enough for Komachi, of course, but he looked like the polite and diligent sort. I stuck out a hand towards him as he approached. "Hey. I'm Komachi's big brother Hachiman. Nice to meet you."

He took it. "Kawasaki Taishi. Thanks for coming out."

"It's my pleasure." Seriously, a willpower quirk? The ability to ignore pain, fatigue, illness, hunger, and other distractions as long as you were focused? In today's corporate environment a quirk like that would have you make manager before you were thirty, and have you dying of overwork before you were fifty. Actually, I was no longer entirely sure that copying it had been a good idea, but like hell I was getting rid of it now, I could think of way too many places it would be useful! Since he'd given me such a magnificent gift, I gave Kawasaki-kun a polite smile as we sat down. "So, what can I do for you?"

Before he could start, the waiter came to take our orders. Excited to eat something for once that was full of fat and carbohydrates rather than lean protein, I jumped right for the spaghetti carbonara. The kids decided to split a pizza, out of consideration for my wallet - oi, I'm paying? Anyways, once we all had beverages and the waiter had left, I once again fixed Kawasaki-kun with a questioning glare. "Um, well, it's my sister," he started, "she goes to UA, and, well, I'm a little worried about her."

I nodded. "Komachi's told me that much. What's your sister's name? What year is she? Do you know what class?"

"Um, my sister's name is Saki." Kawasaki Saki, huh? Hmm. Never heard of her. "And I think she said she was in class 1-F."

Class F… that was the Support Course, wasn't it? I don't think I'd talked to anyone from there yet. "Okay, I don't think I know her, but finding her shouldn't be too hard. I can always ask her homeroom teacher, or something. So, what's going on that has you so worried?"

He frowned into his glass of water as I grabbed for another breadstick. "Well, almost since she got in, she's been coming home super late. Like, the past couple days she hasn't gotten home until five AM."

"That's not late, that's early." I said bluntly. Man, even if she had a willpower quirk like her brother that would let her ignore fatigue, all of that lack of sleep would catch up to her eventually.

"Mmm," Taishi said, "I mean, nee-san says she's fine, she's just been inspired lately and working hard, but, like, does UA even stay open that late for students? What is she even doing out that late?"

I snorted, swallowing heavily before I could reply. "It's UA, kid. Overdoing things is literally the school motto. If she found a teacher willing to supervise her in staying up that late, I wouldn't put it past them to enable her."

Komachi drove an elbow into my ribs with what for her was a gentle amount of force. I did my best not to spray mouthfuls of half-chewed bread all over the table. "Hmph. You can trust my brother on that, Taishi-kun. He knows _all about_ overdoing things, doesn't he?" I coughed, giving her a put-upon expression, but she just gave me a pointed look, and gestured with her eyes towards the now-empty basket of breadsticks. Ah. Yeah, I suppose eating like a starving person was a good sign that I hadn't given up on the muscle building quirk like she'd emphatically suggested.

I finished chewing and swallowed. Thank goodness I could double up on my Digestion quirk now, or I might have been too full to finish dinner. "She's probably just getting ready for the Sports Festival, and everything will go back to normal in a couple weeks. But if it'll make you feel better, Taishi-kun," I said reluctantly, "I'll be happy to check on her tomorrow at school."

"Really?" he asked, breaking the first smile I had seen on his face all night. "That's a huge relief!"

"I told you he would," Komachi bragged. "Onii-chan isn't in the Hero course for nothing."

Crap. Now I had to actually do it, instead of telling him I couldn't find her. I gave the kid my best solemn nod, and he brightened up even further. Predictably, Taishi spent the majority of dinner asking me what the hero course was like, what it had been like facing villains, and so on, and so forth. I answered around mouthfuls of deliciously creamy pancetta-flavored pasta, enjoying the salt and cream and fat and carbohydrates like they were an actual drug. Surprisingly, Komachi seemed pretty happy with herself, even if she was sort of being ignored in the conversation; if she was this self-satisfied just being able to brag about me to one person, she'd be insufferable after the Sports Festival when I would actually be on television.

And wasn't that a depressing thought.

Still, how much time could talking to Kawasaki Saki take? Especially now that I was charging quirks at double speed thanks to the Ooze-Mime fusion, as long as things kept going more or less as planned, I would be ready for it.

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Seeing Yukinoshita Yukino on my way biking into school the next morning was entirely unplanned. But I had to slow my bike to a stop, if only for the reason that she was in the middle of climbing a tree.

"Nya." She called out, extending her hands towards a tabby that seemed to be stuck several branches higher than she had reached.

"Nyao!" It yowled, hissing with its' back up.

"Nya." Again, Yukinoshita Yukino called out softly, extending her hand towards the cat.

"Nyao!" Again, it growled back at her.

"Nya, nya."

"Oi, everything okay?" I asked, butting into their conversation, such as it was.

Yukinoshita paused for a second. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're in a tree, talking to a -"

"Obviously I am attempting to rescue the cat from the tree. It isn't exactly a terribly hard concept to grasp, you know. Even our Hero Service Request training mentioned that you don't need a quirk to rescue a cat from a tree. Were you not paying attention?" She glared down at me with her cold, blue eyes and I wisely shut up about her talking to the cat.

Instead, I asked, "well, do you want any help?"

She took her free hand which had been extended toward the cat and used it to press her skirt into her legs. Oh, come on, I hadn't even been trying to look yet. "If you think there's anything that you can do that I haven't been doing already, feel free," she said bluntly.

I sighed and laid my bike up against another nearby tree before coming back. Let's see, what would come in handy here… Big Hands and Death Arms? My hands suddenly swelled slightly larger and got a little tougher, perfect for climbing trees without scraping up the skin on my palms, while the extra strength from Death Arms added enough power to make climbing trivial. Very swiftly I was more or less on level with Yukinoshita, where the handholds and footholds above us were starting to look a little insecure. I reached out with my still kind of enlarged hand toward the cat, who hissed and yowled at me.

"You see?" Yukinoshita said, "It's too afraid to accept help."

I ignored her. "Psspsspss," I hissed at the cat. "Tchtchtch. Easy there. Easy." It was a fairly cool spring morning, and the cat looked bedraggled, like it had possibly been out all night. I switched Vulture Glide to Hot Skin, turning my enlarged hand into practically a radiator of heat, and put my hand in front of the cat, not too close, waiting for it to notice. It took a couple of swipes at it, warning me away, but I didn't flinch, just still talking to it in that calming voice. Besides, my hands were pretty tough at the moment, anyways. Sure enough, after a few seconds, it calmed down a little, kind of sniffing at my hand for a second cautiously. "That's it, that's it. Kamakura likes it when I do this, too. Now, c'mere."

I quickly reached out and grabbed it around the neck, pulling it close to me and tucking it into my jacket. For its part, the fact that I was doing my best imitation of a space heater kept it from struggling too much, instead burrowing into my jacket out of a combination of fear and seeking comfort. I gave up Big Hand and used Vulture Glide to easily float my way back down, now that I no longer needed the extra grip strength, and gave Yukinoshita a smug smirk of triumph as she came down as well. "You were saying?"

She frowned at me. "Quirk use in public spaces is illegal, Hikigaya-san." For all that she sounded uptight, she wasn't Iida, so I was guessing that she was actually more irritated about me besting her than at me having surreptitiously broken a meaningless rule.

"Ah, sorry there, Mr. Cat," I said down to the wriggling furball in my jacket. "I forgot to tell you, you were actually being rescued by a dangerous Vigilante using his quirk in public. You don't mind, do you?" He started purring, loudly, and I looked back up at Yukinoshita with deadpan expression. "Looks like he's fine with it." She gave an exasperated sigh, so I stepped a little closer to her and opened my jacket a little, revealing the orangish fluff inside. "Hey, while I've got a good grip on him, do you mind checking him for a collar or something?"

Her stern expression softened, and she tentatively reached out a hand. "If, if you insist." She reached in and softly stroked the orange fur, checking around the neck specifically but also just generally touching it affectionately. Surprisingly, for a cat that had been panicky and ready to maul anything that got too close to it a second ago, it was behaving pretty well now. "You're so warm," Yukinoshita told me, "No wonder he likes you. Is that a quirk too?"

"I refuse to answer, on the grounds that I might incriminate myself," I said self-righteously. "So? No collar?"

She shook her head. "Either he slipped free of it, or he never had one in the first place. What should we do?"

I shrugged. "Bring him to school with us, I guess? The teachers are all Pro Heroes, at least one of them has to have dealt with a lost pet before."

Yukinoshita paused for a second and then nodded. "Then, shall we go? We're likely to be late already."

"Sure." I paused for a second. "Oi, Yukinoshita, mind grabbing my bike?"

We walked together for a few minutes without speaking, the only sounds the clicking of the gears on my bicycle, the purring of Orange-kun tucked into my uniform jacket, and the occasional passing car. Eventually I spoke up, if for no other reason than to break the tension. "So, ah, you must live fairly close, then?" I asked, "were you walking to school when you found this guy?"

"Yes," Yukinoshita agreed, "I started renting an apartment for school that isn't far from here. And you?"

"Oh, uh, I live in Chiba," I said, reaching one hand into my jacket to knead at the loose fur on Orange-kun's neck.

"Well, yes, I assumed so, but where in Chiba? Funabashi?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

Oh, she must have thought I meant the prefecture. "No, Chiba."

She looked at me like I had said something outrageous. "That's twenty-five kilometers away. Why don't you move closer? Or take the train?"

"I take the train when it rains," I said a little defensively, "but biking is faster. And if I moved closer, I'd have to cook for myself, clean up after myself, buy my own groceries, do my own laundry… it's not like it'd save me that much time, when you really get down to it."

Yukinoshita gave me a disgusted look. "So, you're saying that you don't want to move closer to school because you'd be incapable of acting like a functional adult?"

Ouch, that one stung. "Oi, having appreciation for the time things take doesn't mean I can't do them," even if these days I was mostly leaving them to Komachi, which I felt a little guilty about, "and there are other reasons too. I have a little sister at home still, it's good exercise…"

"Somehow I'm not surprised that's one of the reasons," Yukinoshita said with a sigh. "Actually, I'm amazed that you have any energy left at the end of the day to ride back."

I shrugged. "The bike is rated for quirk-assisted pedaling, and muscle licenses are easier to get than driver's licenses. As long as I follow traffic laws, there's no problem." Also, nobody really notices if you're glowing very faintly orange in broad daylight, and Stockpile never seems to run out of energy, so even if I get tired my quirk never does.

"That must be nice," she said faintly.

I gave her a sideways glance. Well, yeah, I suppose her quirk doesn't really lend itself well to crowded traffic intersections. "Look on the bright side, at least your quirk is actually useful for hero work," I said bluntly. "Having a quirk that doesn't cause anyone else any problems when you use it is only a good thing when there aren't any villains that you need to cause problems for."

Yukinoshita blinked. "You think that yours isn't?"

I felt a little uncomfortable. I couldn't just tell her that I spent hours and hours every night storing up quirks, not with the lies I'd already told; I couldn't tell her that I was worried that it might not be sustainable, that everybody else was already growing stronger and that I was only ever going to be stuck at the same level… so I lied again. "It's just pretty new that it is," I said awkwardly, "I'm not used to it yet."

"Well, Neko-san seems to think highly of it," Yukinoshita said as we passed through UA's front gate, looking down at the cat still burrowing into my arms for warmth, "so I'm just going to take his word for it."

I sniffed. "How bland and uncreative can you be? Obviously his name is Orange-kun."

"Orenji? And you call me uncreative? At least shorten it to Renji, or something," Yukinoshita retorted.

I blinked. "Actually, do we know he's a boy? I didn't exactly check. It would be a shame to give him a nickname and realize later that she was a lady-cat."

"As if a lady would be so irresponsible as to get herself stuck up a tree," Yukinoshita said with fake scorn in her voice, but despite herself she couldn't help but softly smile.

Suddenly, I realized, we were at the front door of the school building, and I flushed for some indiscernible reason before looking away from her. "Ah, um, here," I said, fishing around in my pocket with my free hand before digging out my keyring. "Would you mind just locking my bike up over in the bike rack, there?"

"O-oh, certainly." While she was gone, I pulled out my phone to check the time. We were late, but it was still Homeroom. Hopefully, Aizawa-sensei would be understanding.

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I stared at Aizawa-sensei. Aizawa-sensei stared back. My jacket rustled, revealing an orange tabby cat, who poked his head out of my jacket and meowed. Aizawa-sensei stared at the cat. The cat stared back.

"All right, give her here," Aizawa said, gently accepting Renji from my grasp. "I'll make sure she's taken care of. You guys can have the rest of homeroom to do whatever." He reached out to scratch at the cat's chin, keeping - her, I guess? - expertly tucked in the other arm, and practically vanished out the door. Despite his attempts to keep his dour and intimidating superhero persona up in front of us, I could see his cold expression melting as he passed us. Heh.

Yaoyorozu bounced up to me. "As expected of Hikigaya-san! And Yukinoshita-san too, of course! I just knew you two were absent for a good reason!"

"Well, it was either that or Hikigaya tripped over a Villain on the way to school, so..." Bakugo drawled. Surprisingly, a lot of people laughed like they agreed with what he was saying.

Eh? That's the most likely explanation for me being late? Fighting Villains? Oh no, does everybody think I'm like Bakugo? Help, I've been stained by association! "Oi, not one of you thought of me maybe just oversleeping instead of fighting Villains? Who am I, All Might?" Seriously, the number of times he's been late to class because he was busy punching drug-addled thugs in the face was ridiculous.

There was more laughter at that, and Yaoyorozu made as if to hand me a sheaf of papers. "Since you were out, Aizawa-sensei had me run homeroom, but since you're back…"

I walked past her, heading for my seat. "You've already started, Yaoyorozu. Go ahead, I'm sure you're doing fine. I have confidence in you." Damn, Aizawa-sensei already started off-loading his homeroom duties onto us? I'd call him lazy if I hadn't seen the results of his hard work back at the USJ. No, wait, I'll still call him lazy. The question is, how can I be just as lazy? Hmm, is there a way to offload running homeroom onto Yaoyorozu? No, that's a little too unfair, I'd never get away with it. Maybe alternating?

For her part, Yaoyorozu beamed with a smile, _entirely_ too happy at having had busywork offloaded onto her. "Okay, then. I'll continue with the summaries of this week's Hero Assistance Request Training. Group Three, you guys had a new requester. Um, let's see… it says that you did fairly well, but that you had some troubles with communication, so maybe focus on that for next time." She passed the papers out, handing them on down the lines. I wanted to just slouch down on my desk and catnap for a few minutes, but since our group was about to be up next I resisted the urge. "Group Four. Congratulations, you guys have… actually, two different forms here. The first one is an update from your original requester Totsuka Saika-san, again giving you guys a more or less perfect score, and then the second one is from… an Iwato Tezuki-san?

My blood turned to ice for a second at the name. "Wait. Did you say Iwato?"

Yaoyorozu read a few more lines of the report, then smiled at me, a warm and open expression on her face. "Yes. Apparently because you caught the shape-shifting Villain the other week, they managed to get to Iwato-san's house in time to prevent him from suffering any permanent damage from blood loss. Apparently, he wrote a thank-you note to everyone who had worked to save him, but he especially thanks you, Hikigaya-san."

Something cold and hard in my gut unfurled slightly. "Is that so?" I was going to have to poke the kid every time I saw him in the future out of pure paranoia, but… apparently, somehow, I'd actually saved someone. Or enabled the proper authorities to save someone. And all it cost was me nearly getting myself killed. But still. Someone out there, other than Komachi, thought of me as a hero. I couldn't help but be a little self-satisfied at that.

Yaoyorozu's smile took on a slightly more sympathetic tone. "There's also some notes here from the faculty, basically saying 'good job, now never do it again,' so… well, I'll just let you read it."

I couldn't help but subconsciously shiver as I remembered Principal Nezu's lecture, and sure enough, as Yaoyorozu handed out the papers to all of us I saw that the principal had included a post-script that filled the entire bottom half of the page in incredibly tiny letters and then moved on to the back of the paper. Welp, at least the thank-you letter was nice.

"Oh! Did you get one too, Yaomomo?" Yuigahama asked.

I redirected my attention to Yaoyorozu, who indeed was still holding on to a sheet of paper despite having passed out all of our reports. Unlike our copies, I could plainly see that the back of her paper was blank. "Mmm, I did," she said, her expression faltering for a second. She quickly set it aside, before reaching for a last stack of papers. "Group Five, um, it says that you've improved since the last session, and that they're pretty happy with the way things are going now, so good job. And… there's another one here from Group Five's clients thanking Group Four?"

Ah, crap, this was bad. Clearly, because even the thank-you letter had been printed on the Hero Assistance Request paperwork, how many of these we completed was probably going to be important at some point, and now it looked like we were stealing work from Group Five. I hurriedly cleared my throat. "Well, uh, it turned out that our groups had pretty similar goals in mind, so we started working together on stuff. I'll make sure that Saika knows he should fill out paperwork for how much Group Five has helped him, too."

"Thanks, Hikigaya-san," Hayama said, turning and smiling at me. Unsurprisingly, his smile looked faker than usual.

"Don't mention it," I mumbled.

Suddenly the bell rang, cutting short any further conversation or discussion as we all started preparing for math class with Ectoplasm. As I got out my books I switched over to my shiny new Willpower quirk. Admittedly, at 1/108 strength the effect was barely even noticeable, but when it came to having to do math before nine a.m., every little bit helped.

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After classes had finally ended for the day, rather than jumping onto my bike and pedaling for the sweet freedom of home, I begrudgingly headed towards the other side of the UA school building, the Support Department campus. Thanks to the miracles of a quirk that I would never be able to use again without feeling guilt, my muscles no longer physically hurt, but I could still feel the phantom pain of their reconstruction, as well as the more realistic aches throbbing at my temples and gnawing at my stomach. Having already eaten all the food I brought with me today, I was therefore engrossed in opening the packaging to a vending-machine onigiri when I accidentally collided with someone and sent the papers they were holding all over the floor.

"Oh, sorry about that, let me just… / Oi, why don't you watch where you're…" The two of us started talking at once, only for me to accidentally touch her hand as we both picked up papers. Suddenly, I looked up at her, and our eyes met. "It's you!" we both shouted.

A beat of silence. "Wait, it's me?" the tall girl with the silver hair asked, a faint flush forming on her cheeks. "How do you know me?"

"I didn't realize you'd gotten into UA," I said excitedly, "I probably should have guessed you would, though, you're amazing!" It was the girl with the sleep quirk! Maybe it was a little weird for me to be this excited at meeting her again, but considering that her quirk had probably saved my life multiple times over just by allowing me extra quirk-stocking time, and that I had never let her know I had copied it, the thought of being able to thank her for it in the way that I had never thanked Zaimokuza was a huge relief. And seriously, with a quirk like that, she could go anywhere! I bent down to keep helping her with her fallen papers, scooping them up and trying to get them into some semblance of order. "We actually went to the same junior high," I explained, "I hardly recognized you at first with your hair up in a ponytail like that, you've changed a lot!"

She flushed a deeper red and touched her hair self-consciously. "Eh? Eh? Ah? Oh, wait, you were the other one that got in with Orimoto-san? Um… Hikitani, was it?"

My eyebrow twitched, but given who had asked and the sad state of my lack of popularity in junior high I wasn't about to complain too much. "Hikigaya, yeah, that's me. Wait, if you don't recognize me from middle school, then where do you recognize me from?"

She looked away as I straightened back up with her papers, apparently embarrassed about not having remembered the me of the past. Despite her embarrassment, however, she seemed to speak coldly, almost derisively. "You're Class 1-A's president, right? The whole _school_ knows who you are."

Huh? "What?" I said intelligibly.

She looked back towards me, her face still a little red. "You're pretending you don't know? Everybody says you caught a Villain infiltrating the school," actually, it was more like she caught me, "and you saved your class from even more Villains at the USJ," does throwing Hayama through a window count? Or am I famous for kissing my teacher? "Did you think people wouldn't know who you were? And, um…." she flushed a little more at this and looked down, suddenly less aggressive, "there's the video…"

I was about to explain all of the ways that the rumor mill had things completely wrong, but I was suddenly overcome by morbid curiosity. "What video?"

Silently, the silver-haired girl brought out her phone. She tapped a few things on it, then handed it to me. As I looked at the screen I saw a video titled "1-A's pres says, Work Harder!" Bemused, I pressed play.

Horrifically, the tinny speaker immediately started replaying the sound of my voice. "All you have to do is work out two hours a day on your own, and you can keep up with us and get in due to the more favorable circumstances, right? Class 1-A, hands in the air if you put in at least, let's say, an extra hour a day of exercise, quirk training, or other practice that you weren't assigned for school." Hastily, I pressed pause. Oh god, was _that_ what I sounded like?

The silver-haired girl kept seeming like she was trying to look at me, but kept looking away. Probably just as well, I don't know what the heck kind of stupid face I was making, right at the moment. "A bunch of us who aren't in the hero program have been, I dunno, using the video to, like, psych ourselves up and stuff. You know, jokes like 'did you put your three hours in yet?' Stuff like that."

I slowly closed my jaw and handed back her phone, juggling it a little bit with the pile of paper and the half-opened onigiri I was holding. What did I even say to that? "Well," I eventually began, "even if other people don't have time, you probably could if you wanted to, right?"

At that, she looked at me directly and smiled. "Yeah! It's like, there's so many people in the Support department who are like, geniuses and stuff, right? And all these heroes who have, like, just ridiculous quirks. But if you can just put in the hours, work twice as hard as anyone else, then…"

Despite the weirdness of the situation, I had to nod in agreement. "Then you might still lose, but it'll at least give you a shot, right?"

She frowned at me. "Ehhh? Oi, what kind of motivational saying is that? Be more positive!"

"I'm sorry," I said sarcastically, my eyebrows high on my forehead "but have you _seen_ some of the quirks on people this year?"

Our eyes met. Suddenly, she laughed. It wasn't a giggle, nothing quite so girly; it was more of a stifled, earthy chuckle, with her hand covering her mouth to try and hold it in. I did my best not to glower. "You know what, Hiki...gaya-san?" she said, slowly straightening up. "You're all right."

I handed her back her wad of papers, looking away from her in a combination of irritation and embarrassment. "Glad you approve."

"So?" She said, juggling things in her arms to get herself settled, "what brings you here to the Support Department? Need your costume tweaked?"

I shook my head. "No. Well, now that you mention it, maybe, but that's not really why I'm here. I'm sort of on an errand for my little sister. I'm looking for the older sister of one of her friends. Do you happen to know anyone named Kawasaki Saki?

The silver-haired girl gave me a weird look. "You could just say you wanted to talk to me. Are you an idiot?"

I stared at Kawasaki Saki. "In my defense, you called me Hikitani."

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One explanation later, the two of us were seated in Kawasaki's workroom. Folds of cloth were scattered all over the place on hangers and folded up into bolts, while an extra-large working desk was covered with scattered fabric patterns and articles on the properties of various metamaterial cloths. "Ugh, Taishi," she said with a fond groan of irritation. "I told him I was fine. It's not like staying up late working hurts me any."

I shrugged. "Younger siblings worry. It's kind of what they do. And just because you're getting enough sleep, doesn't mean you're eating right or other stuff like that."

Kawasaki looked down at the still half-opened package of onigiri in my hand, which I had somehow forgotten to eat. "Speaking from experience?"

"Unfortunately," I said ruefully. I folded over the edge of the package and stuffed it in my pocket for later. "Despite all the rumors about me, the fact of the matter is my quirk is actually ridiculously weak. Pretty much the only thing keeping me in the hero course is the fact that I can do things like channel fractions of quirks like yours to help me get more time to work on things. Honestly, if not for my copy of your quirk specifically, I'd probably be either expelled or dead."

Despite the grimness of the conversation, she smiled at that. "That's kind of the point of the Support Course, isn't it? We give our time and energy so that the heroes can save the day. I'm glad my quirk was helpful."

"Seriously," I said, bowing slightly toward her. "Thank you. Sincerely." There was a pause in which neither of us knew what to say, so I forcibly changed the subject. "So, what's got you staying out so late?"

She sighed. "I'd say you wouldn't understand, but you probably would, wouldn't you?" She looked down the hallway, towards a workroom that had a rather scary amount of industrial-sounding noises coming from it. "Us Support Course students are allowed to use anything we've built to help us during the Sports Festival to balance out the fact that we don't have particularly useful quirks. And, like, some of us are legitimately genius inventors, that can make all sorts of fancy gadgets and gizmos," she said, with a significant nod towards the hallway, "and then there's people like me, who had good grades in junior high and a decent fashion portfolio for costume design, and know how to sew pretty well. I mean, I've always wanted to design costumes for heroes, ever since I was a little girl, and I was super excited about doing it at UA, but it feels like I'm so far behind." She slumped down in her chair slightly. "I'm sorry, you probably think that costumes are a stupid thing to be so worried about…"

I shook my head. "I mean, good costume design literally saved my life at the USJ, so, no, I don't think so." At her look of surprise, I continued. "I used a quirk to reinforce my cape into an impromptu parachute after a villain teleported me thousands of feet into the sky. If it'd been shorter, or less airtight, I might have gone splat. Actually, if I was going to tweak my costume any, I might try to make my cape bigger, so I could fly with it better. Though obviously, I wouldn't need it until after the Sports Festival."

Kawasaki brightened up. "That actually sounds like a really fascinating challenge to work on! But yeah, like you said, it'd have to be after the Sports Festival." She sighed a little bit, stretching in a way that did interesting things to areas I probably shouldn't let her catch me looking at. "There's going to be a lot of people watching the Festival who it'd be great if I could impress. Support Companies, Best Jeanist… I'm not an inventor, but Power Loader-sensei has a bunch of kind of … I guess default support tools? Stuff that's commercially available, if you have the budget anyway, that UA makes available to us. I'm working on something right now called Angel Armor that people usually don't touch until their second years, and I'm just struggling to get everything done in time."

"Well, I don't really know what that is, but it sure sounds impressive," I replied. "In that case, I'll leave and let you get back to work, and I'll tell Taishi that everything's alright with you?"

She smiled. "That'd be helpful, thanks. And, tell him thanks for worrying, would you?"

I shrugged. "If you really want, but that seems like the sort of thing you should tell him yourself."

Kawasaki nodded, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. "Um... if you wanted to reassure him that I was eating, you're... welcome to come out with me. To grab a bite. If you wanted." She looked aside a little, once again flushing red, and I hastily had to cudgel my overactive imagination into submission.

In lieu of an immediate reply as I got my errant hopes under control (please, like a girl would really be asking me out on a date,) I pulled the smushed onigiri out of my pocket. "Sorry," I said, brandishing it like a talisman, "but I've got to bike back to Chiba before it gets too dark. I'll be okay with this for now." She looked a little disappointed, so for some reason I added, "um. Maybe after the Sports Festival?"

She looked back at me determinedly. "Yeah. After the Sports Festival, I should have more time, too."

"Good luck," I wished her, standing to leave. "Fighting."

Kawasaki smiled and gave me a nod, setting her long silver ponytail to swaying. "You too, Hikigaya-san."

As I left, somehow cramming the entire onigiri into my mouth between the Support Department and the front door, I found myself in an unaccountably good mood. The idea that I could be some sort of source of inspiration to the student body was absurd, of course, but if they were taking words I had said out of context and finding something valuable from them, then I guessed that it was okay.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen?

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The crowd roared as Midnight took the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to U.A.'s Sports Festival! Before we begin, I'd like to introduce a new program that we began this year, the HEro Assistance Request Training, or HEART! Basically, it's a way for hero students to work in teams to connect with their classmates in the general education, support, business classes. By seeing how much of an effect they had on their classmates, it lets us also measure who has the greatest heart of a hero! Therefore, the player pledge this year will be conducted by the hero student who scored highest on their Hero Assistance Requests! The winning student not only had the highest score on any individual request, but also completed the most requests total, and was the most-recommended hero student on a survey asking if there had been any members of the Hero Classes who had helped their fellow students in an unofficial capacity! Representing the first year students is Class 1-A's Hikigaya Hachiman!"


	15. The Sports Festival Obstacle Race

There's no particular merit to being honest when doing so doesn't cost you anything. I myself was an exceptionally honest person in middle school, if only because I was so unpopular that nobody ever asked me any personal questions where the answer would be difficult to say out loud. Heroes, on the other hand, often have important secrets that need keeping and are constantly bombarded by the media with personal questions in the name of generating clicks and ratings. Even disregarding a hero's personal needs for privacy, making a positive impression on the public is crucial for a hero, and naturally the most effective way for a hero to accomplish such a thing is with a never-ending stream of embellishments, media spins, staged appearances, and other 'little white lies' to boost their credibility and appeal. Indeed, from a certain perspective, lies are more heroic than honesty could ever be.

So why couldn't I make my legs move? The student pledge was just a bit of nonsense that was said before sporting competitions, literally just lip service, so there was no reason I shouldn't be able to walk up and mutter a few insincere platitudes into a microphone. But still. Somehow, the thought of solemnly swearing that I would honestly abide by the spirit of fair play in front of an audience of tens of thousands - many of whom were Pro Heroes - made me want to throw up. Was it the fact that I was being insincerely upheld as an avatar of civic responsibility and virtue? Above the stadium on an electronic display screen I could see the smiling faces of all of the 'HEARTs' I had touched; somehow the simple acts of climbing a tree and playing tennis for a few hours had been reframed by UA's teachers as acts of heroism and used to dupe the gullible masses into thinking that I was some kind of paragon. What's worse was, I couldn't even be mad about it. Totsuka and Renji were too adorable to be blamed for my current predicament. Iwato was too pitiful. In theory I could have blamed Kawasaki Taishi, since the little cockroach had oh-so-helpfully filled out a HEART request as well, but the fact that I bothered helping him was my cute little sister's fault, so that was no good either.

And yet I was angry anyways. Of all of the ways that the teachers could have 'helped' me look more 'impressive', they just had to pick one that wouldn't improve my chances of being brought into a dangerous police investigation in the slightest.

The first person to notice my paralysis - no, the stadium was full of literally thousands of people watching me, she probably wasn't the first one to notice, but the first person to do anything about it was Yuigahama Yui. Which wasn't surprising, really; earlier in the morning, when the hotheads in the class had been trying to psych themselves up by issuing pointless challenges to each other (and while I had been 'calmly and stoically sitting in silence', aka tuning everyone else out while trying not to hyperventilate), Yuigahama had been one of the few people in the waiting room who was going around to other students and trying to comfort them.

Without a doubt, Yuigahama Yui was a nice girl, someone who would offer an encouraging word or a pat on the back to anyone who looked like they needed it. But regardless of my being aware of that fact, when all of a sudden I felt a warm and gentle hand on my shoulder blade, that light and comforting touch jolted me out of my stupor, seemingly burning in my awareness long after that contact between us had ended. I turned to see Yuigahama smiling broadly at me, looking fresh and energetic in the school sports uniform. "You can do it, Hikki!" She cheered. "You'll be fine! Do it just like that speech you gave last week!"

That damn speech. On the electronic display, below the faces of the people I had supposedly heroically helped, there was a little pie chart showing just how many of my fellow students had nominated me as the most influential of their peers - and it was all the fault of those purple-haired assholes from the Gen-Ed classes. Somehow the words I had spat out in irritation over the mere existence of morons with so much free time that they could waste it on petty challenges had metamorphosed into a malicious meme that had infected the whole school.

In all honesty, the fact that a pretty girl was cheering me on was motivating in and of itself, but beyond giving my ego a boost and helping my delusional libido suppress my moral integrity, her words had another, more important effect. I took a step away from Yuigahama, turning my torso slightly so that her hand naturally slid off of my shoulder, and gave her a nod. "...Thanks." I muttered. For reminding me that even if I was a lousy hero and didn't deserve to be up there giving speeches, I did have an excellent reason to do so - petty spite.

Slowly, I stepped away from the crowd of first-year students and toward the microphone. My hands clenched into fists as I approached it, anger and adrenaline beginning to sizzle in my bloodstream, transmuting the butterflies of stage fright into something more vicious. The closer I got to the microphone, the angrier I got. Sure, those gen ed students had been jerks with free time that they didn't deserve, but as much as I despised them, at the end of the day they were just morons without any common sense - also known as average teenagers. As I stepped up next to Midnight-sensei on the podium, I realized that if there was anyone who was really to blame, anyone who really deserved my anger, it was… "The League of Villains," I said into the microphone.

The stadium fell dead silent. Obviously, everyone watching had been expecting me to say something that started with 'Sensei, I pledge." Moreover, people were curious. The attack had only been a few weeks ago, and UA had been scanty with the details that it had released to the media. The suggestion that I would break that silence had an effect similar to waving raw red meat in front of a hungry dog, and so between their surprise and their curiosity - and _possibly_ basic courtesy for someone giving a speech - everyone shut up to listen. Maybe Midnight should have stopped me, or given me some sign that I should have stuck to the pledge instead of making an impromptu speech, but instead she smiled at me and licked her lips in a way that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

Into the silence, I began again. "The League of Villains attacked the USJ with a goal in mind. One of their leaders said during the attack that they were there to cure a societal disease, that the fact that heroes are sometimes treated like celebrities was so intolerable that it justified them murdering kids." Realistically, the League of Villains had only attacked the USJ to try to murder All Might, but tarring their reputation as fame-obsessed crackpot losers was _way_ more cathartic. "They aren't the only ones who think that way either," I continued, "the Hero Killer has been all over the news for attacking heroes that make a lot of media appearances, and you can find all kinds of people online with more free time than common sense who say that heroes who try their hardest to become famous are 'fake'." I stopped for a second, my hands up in air quotes around that last word, then let them drop with a shrug. "I could go over the enormous list of reasons that people like them are completely and totally wrong. But I don't want to bore you all, so I'll just say that for people like the League of Villains and the Hero Killer, today's Sports Festival goes against everything that they stand for, which is why I'm happy to be taking part."

That got a response from the crowd, a rippling wave of laughter and cheers echoing through the stadium. Of course, in reality I was a lot less certain of my words than I was making myself sound. Killing people was obviously the wrong way to approach social change, but I wasn't exactly ignorant of the problems that blind worship of heroism caused. I was probably even an example of just the sort of 'Fake Hero' that the Hero Killer supposedly despised. But there was no way in hell that was I going to treat the arguments of monsters like All For One with any kind of dignity, so instead those arguments were summarily dismissed as meaningless drivel, and laughed at by a crowd of tens of thousands in person and probably hundreds of thousands on television. Hope you're watching, asshole.

As the laughter died down, I continued my impromptu speech. "With that said, there are probably people out there who _aren't_ murderous thugs using facile arguments as justifications for their crimes, who _also_ think that events like this are fake and overblown. Unlike that former group, those people actually have a right to their own opinion. And in response to them, I just want to say this." I paused, taking a deep breath, and looked straight at the flickering news cameras. "Whether you think that media events like this one are real or fake; whether you think that all of us students are Real Heroes-in-training or Fake Heroes-in-training, our hard work, at least, is real. The sweat and tears and blood and bile we've shed, the hours we've put in after we were already exhausted, all of those are real. So for today's pledge, Sensei, I hereby pledge to show everyone watching here the results of our hard work. Thank you." And with that, I bowed and stepped back from the microphone.

The audience, not knowing that I had only decided to change the pledge because I wasn't capable of honestly pledging to play fair, cheered again; this time the cheers were louder, and not just coming from the stands. As I turned to walk back to the assembled students I saw a wide array of smiles, thumbs-ups, nods of respect, and other signs of approval. Kirishima gave me a congratulatory slap on the back as I passed him; Bakugo an 'encouraging' punch in the bicep. (After I passed the two of them I gave Midoriya a wide berth, just in case.) All in all it only made me feel a _little_ sick to my stomach.

Thankfully, I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on the issue. With a swish of her flogger, Midnight was already continuing the ceremony, and by 'continuing the ceremony', I actually mean unceremoniously starting the Sports Festival proper. "Well said, Hikigaya-san! Now, it's time for what you've all been waiting for! Our first event, an event that crushes the hopes and dreams of three out of every four students who challenge it, that's right, the qualifiers! Every year, UA puts new challenges up against our heroes to be, and this year…" With a dramatic pause and a fan-servicey hip swivel, Midnight-sensei pointed dramatically at the huge stadium display. In the background, a brass instrumental track started being played over the public announcement system, and the display started mimicking the reels of a slot machine, flickering through 'potential events' too fast for any individual one to be identified - which struck me as an unnecessary bit of showmanship given that there was no way in hell that what we were doing was actually going to be decided at random, but then again, I wasn't in charge. Speaking of unnecessary showmanship, as the reels of the 'slot machine' slowed, Midnight continued speaking. "Our students first challenge will be -" _Don-don!_ A cheerful musical cue rang out in time with the stadium display settling on a single challenge. "An Obstacle Course Race!"

I couldn't help but turn and stare at Hayama, who had the good grace to look slightly abashed. Damn, maybe it was randomly determined? Unless the obstacles involved things like 'ceilings', anybody with a flight quirk basically was getting an automatic pass on to the next round. Maybe this was UA's way of rewarding Hayama for having been the student who successfully went to get help at the USJ? As Midnight stopped speaking, Present Mic took over, his shrill and piercing voice blaring over the intercom. "That's right, ladies and gentlemen, it's an OBSTACLE COOOURSE RAAAACE!" His speaker-amplified voice warring with the roar of the cheering crowds, Present Mic did his best to grandstand. "And yours truly, Present Mic, will be here narrating it all to you, along with my co-announcer, the recently famous, former underground hero, defender of his class and savior of All Might during the USJ incident, Aizawa Shota, better known as ERASERHEAAAD!"

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds before the speakers finally crackled back to life. "...Yo," Aizawa-sensei's voice eventually said. Another cheer erupted from the stands, this one mixed with laughter and good-natured jeers at our homeroom teacher's obvious discomfort with crowds. After a few 'ums' and loud coughs to clear his throat, however, Aizawa-sensei managed to overcome his stage fright for long enough to speak. "There will be eight obstacles in this race. You can skip any of them by taking the pathway that leads around the obstacle area, but if you do, your time will be penalized, so don't skip an obstacle unless you're absolutely sure that going around will be much faster for you than going through."

"Whoa, good advice from my co-announcer there! Any other tips for the kids, Aizawa-san?" Present Mic's shrill voice asked.

Sensei's exasperated sigh was just barely audible over the intercom. Clearly, this bit had been scripted. Despite his apparent frustration, Aizawa-sensei responded, doing his best not to sound as exhausted and burnt-out as we usually saw him in class. "Mmm, well, I don't have a physical enhancement quirk, and I was able to complete all the obstacles in less time than the skip penalty would have cost me," he recited with the barest hint of artificial enthusiasm in his voice. "So if you're aiming for first place, don't skip anything."

"There you have it folks!" Mic-sensei cut back in. "The fastest way around the track is straight through! As long as you're up to the standard of a Pro Hero, anyway. Do you kids think you have what it takes?" That settled it. Normally, in a situation like this, I'd assume that the race was meant to be a test of judgement, where keeping one's cool and not acting like a moron by charging headlong into danger was rewarded. When they framed it like that, though, it was clear that anyone who took the bait of going around the obstacles would be used as a negative example in comparison to the 'brave' and 'heroic' students who 'dared' to break through all obstacles in their way. I could even smell a faint scent of match-fixing coming from the fact that they hadn't told us what the penalties for a skip were ahead of time, probably to keep someone with a speed quirk like Iida from deciding that it would be best to just skip everything that looked even slightly difficult and making up the penalties with raw speed. The notion that a hero only ever charged headlong into danger without thinking of clever ways to evade trouble was completely unrealistic, of course, but the audience watching us was here for exactly that type of unrealistic nonsense. If I wanted to look good enough to make my way onto the investigation, I would have to charge the obstacles no matter how asinine it would be to do so in real life.

Looking around, the expressions of determination on my classmates' faces showed me that the brighter bulbs of 1-A had also understood how the game was set up, and that the less perceptive members had fallen for Present Mic's childish taunting. Even my classmates who were normally a bit unmotivated like Kaminari had fierce looks of determination on their face - which I suppose in his case shouldn't be surprising, given how prone he was to falling for Bakugo's goading. The crowd seemed to feel a sense of anticipation too, as the cheers and whistles slowly died down to an anticipatory silence broken only by Present Mic's piercing shrieks. "Now, let's go to Midnight-sensei for the rules! Take it away, MIDNIIIIIGHT!"

"First rule!" Midnight proclaimed with a snap of a whip. "Stay on or above the track at all times! Second rule! To avoid being penalized for skipping an obstacle, you must enter the obstacle area from an entry gate and exit the area from an exit gate! Bursting through the walls, teleporting into or out of the area, and other methods of evading the obstacle will not count as successfully completing the obstacle! And finally, the third rule, no blocking the entries or exits to the obstacle areas!" Midnight gave all of us a predatory grin. "That's right! Other than that, there are no rules! Interfering with other contestants is fine everywhere but the obstacle entries and exits, using your quirks is 100% allowed, just show us what you've got!"

The audience roared. All around the stadium, the display screens switched to a picture of a traffic light. I took a deep breath and reached into my constellation of quirks, fusing Ooze and Mime in preparation for the race. Around me I noticed people getting into running positions, saw Midoriya beginning to crackle with green static, felt the cool breeze coming from my right as Yukinoshita surreptitiously began to devour heat. I could feel my heart pounding, my palms sweating, and I bit the inside of my lip savagely to calm myself down a little bit. For all that an obstacle race with a variety of challenges sounded like it should be right up my alley, I was going to have to ration my use of Stockpile judiciously. Stockpile made me faster, made me stronger, but if I tried to use it while also using one of my other quirks at their 'normal' levels I would immediately blow through my saved up quirk factor for that quirk whether I wanted to or not - and I couldn't afford to waste all of my hard-stocked quirks on the preliminary round.

Should I use Stockpile at all? Should I try to show off my base level quirks? Just run with my body to show my fitness? What would be most impressive, if I were a cop watching this? As I was furiously trying to choose a strategy, a loud tone sounded, the red light on the traffic light lit up, and Midnight called out "On your marks!"

Damn it, I needed more time to think! I threw two tendrils of Ooze out towards one of my newest quirks, the Noumu quirk I was calling Adrenaline Rush. The sunny stadium grounds suddenly seemed almost painfully bright as my eyes involuntarily dilated, and the noise of the crowd distorted as though I was hearing it underwater, but the super-adrenaline did its job and bought me a few more subjective seconds of frantic thinking. How should I run this race? Wait, forget that, I don't have to decide how to handle the obstacles until I see them, so what do I do right this very second, at the start? There's a crowd, everyone will be screwing each other over…

"Get set!" Another beep, and the red lights on the displays changed to amber.

Maybe it was the super-adrenaline running through my system, pushing my flight-or-flight reflexes to their max, maybe it was the stadium atmosphere and the weight of societal expectations on me pushing me to perform, but in that split second between Set and Go, I decided that the best way to avoid being sabotaged by all of the other contestants was to be too far ahead of them for them to catch me. That interminable pause before the starting buzzer stretched on even longer as I connected my third tendril of Ooze to Stockpile and all of the super-adrenaline I had stored up over the past few weeks flooded into my body at once. It flooded through my veins like fire, simultaneously pushing my nerves and muscles beyond their normal limits, and reinforcing them so that they could withstand the abuse that I was about to put them through.

Three things happened at once. The stoplight almost imperceptibly flickered from amber to green, Midnight's flogger cut down through the air in apparent slow motion, and I ran. For a few seconds, I was immortal. I swerved past a flying purple ball, evaded the grasping hand of someone trying to push me back, and jumped over a sheet of encroaching ice that tried to bind my feet, all in the span of a handful of seconds. Unfortunately, Adrenaline Rush was a little bit like Gigantify in that when I stockpiled it, all of the quirk factor I saved was devoted towards improving the power of the quirk, and none of it towards improving the duration of its effects; still, that initial burst of speed and reflexes did the job I needed it to do. After three seconds of slow-motion dodging the dozen or so attempts at sabotaging me, I was the first person to make it into the tunnel, and had a clear path to run forwards without being pressed by the giant mass of students.

It was a good start. I didn't seem likely to stay in first, though. Risking a glance over my shoulder, I saw more than a few familiar faces in hot pursuit. Midoriya and Iida, both keeping up through sheer running power. Yukinoshita, borrowing heat from the masses. Todoroki, taking advantage of the chilly air to create his ice slide with even less effort than it normally took him. Hayama and that girl from 1-B soaring over the crowd's heads, while Orimoto Kaori simply flowed around them all like a cloud of smoke. Gritting my teeth, I detached from Adrenaline Rush, doubled up on Stockpile, and ran faster.

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"And, showing us why he's the president of Class 1-A, Hikigaya Hachiman is the first one out of the tunnel! But, the other students aren't far behind!" Present Mic's voice boomed out over the stadium, only barely making itself heard over the roar of the crowds.

"Idiot," I muttered under my breath around a mouthful of popcorn. "Nii-san's the president because people voted for him, not because he's a fast runner. I thought you were supposed to be a teacher?"

"Um, Hikigaya-san, calling Pro Heroes idiots is a little bit…"

Well, I thought it had been under my breath anyways. I managed to tear my eyes away from my brother's figure on the race display for long enough to roll them at Taishi. "Yeah, yeah. Which one's your sister, again?" I asked to change the subject. As usual, my parents had intended to come see Hachiman at the festival, had dutifully bought tickets, and then Work happened. I sort of doubted that when Dad gave me his spare ticket and told me to bring a friend to stay safe that he'd meant for me to bring a boy, but it's not like I was going to give the ticket to someone who didn't have a sister at UA when I knew someone who did.

"You can't see her now, she's still in the tunnel, but she's tall and she's wearing a white costume instead of the school uniform," Taishi said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that he was leaning forward, his hands clenched tightly into fists as they braced against his knees.

I squinted slightly. The display zoomed into focus, my eyes magnifying the tunnel exit area so much that I could almost count the pixels. After a few seconds, I saw a flash of white and pale blue. "She's out!" I told Taishi excitedly, "She's in the front half, she's doing good!"

He beamed, leaning even farther forward to try to make out what I had spotted, but before he could, the display changed again. "And the leading students have hit the first obstacle, the Windy Plaaaains!" Present Mic's voice announced. "It might look like a flat field that's easy to run through at the start, but there are actually enormous fans on the outside of the obstacle that can blow a runner or a flier off course! To get through quickly, they'll need not just speed, but stability, and, oh! 1-A's Iida Tenya has taken the lead!"

Sure enough, as my head jerked back towards the display, I saw that Onii-san had fallen behind. Even though he was just as fast as that other guy when the race started, Hachiman was starting to slow down a bit. Even worse, whenever he tried to run, the super strength quirk Hachi was using was making him bounce up off the ground and into the wind. He wasn't the only one having trouble, though. A guy with green lightning on his body was having the same trouble Onii-san was having, only moreso, and both of the students who had tried flying into the obstacle were now battling against the wind and making only slow headway as a result. A few people, like the ice slidey guy with two-colored hair and the girl who could turn into a cloud, had even given up on using their quirks for the obstacle entirely.

Onii-san, of course, didn't need to stop using his quirk, he just switched to different ones. After a few seconds, he stopped glowing orange and started running more normally, with his body real low to the ground to help him beat the wind. Knowing him, he probably had some sort of other quirk active to help him stick to the ground or something - frankly, I stopped trying to keep track of all the little tricks onii-san had years ago. I think it was around the time I caught him sitting on the couch watching televison like a zombie, alternating between using an infrared quirk to change channels, using a telekinesis quirk that was just strong enough to levitate one piece of popcorn to his mouth at a time, and heating himself up with his stupid kotatsu quirk to get the cat to stay on his lap? Anyway, Onii-san had quirks to wash the _dishes_ ; I was pretty sure he had to have _something_ to handle a little bit of wind. Sure enough, whatever he was using was effective. It wasn't enough to let him catch up to the first place guy right away, but it least let him keep his lead over some of the other people coming up from behind him.

"What are your predictions for the match, Eraserhead?" The intercom blared. "Right now it looks like class 1-A is off to an early lead!" The display changed yet again, showing a few of the other students leading the race. I didn't recognize any of them in person, but the explodey-hands-guy and the girl who turned her pants into giant springs both sounded like people Hachiman had told me about, so them being in his class seemed likely. Actually, now that I looked closer, that last girl looked like the person who had encouraged my brother before he did his speech… and he'd said the cloth control quirk girl was the girl whose dog he saved, didn't he? Oh ho? Hmmmm. As much as I wanted to speculate further, however, I was interrupted by Present Mic getting frustrated with his co-announcer's lack of response. "Do you think your students will keep that lead for the rest of the race?"

"It depends," the other announcer answered, and I scowled. Obviously Onii-san's class was going to win! "My students have been very motivated ever since the villain attack, but because of that attack's timing, class B has had some extreme environment and rescue training at the USJ that class A hasn't had the chance to make up yet. With seven obstacles left to go, class B has a lot of opportunities to use that training to make up the distance."

"That's right folks, we've only passed the first obstacle. It's still anybody's race!" Present Mic called out, receiving a resounding cheer from the audience in return. "Speaking of which, it looks like Iida-san has made it to the next obstacle, so let's see what the next of those opportunities will look like!" The display changed yet again, revealing a long stretch of water, like multiple swimming pools laid end to end with each other. The racetrack looked like it was set up to cross the giant pool across its narrow axis, but there was a huge fence in the middle of the water that stretched from the bottom of the pool up to the top of the cage enclosing the obstacle, and all the way down the length of the pool until it reached an opening at the far end. "After the Windy Plains, now we have the Deep River! There's not much room to run by the side of the river, so students will have to either hang on to the fence to slowly inch their way across, or swim all the way up the 'river' to get to the hole in the gate. Or, if they're skilled at diving, there are underwater shortcuts they can try for - but those are down pretty deep! Iida-san is the first racer to hit the obstacle, will he dive? Will he swim? And, yes, he's throwing off his sports jacket and jumping into the water without any hesitation! What a powerful flutter kick! He's like a motorboat, heading straight for the far gate!"

Despite all the spectacle that the guy in first place was making, it couldn't hold my interest; I was more focused on the entry gate to the obstacle at the bottom of the screen than the action at the center. Luckily, I didn't have long to wait. More and more students were passing the first obstacle and making their way to the second. After Iida came a girl with long black hair, who somehow was able to freeze the water underneath her feet for long enough to practically dance on top of it, and then the green lightning guy, who used his super strength to jump back and forth between the walls and ceiling of the obstacle's cage. Then, finally, Onii-san came into view, and I let out a cheer for him even as the PA system drowned me out. "Swimming the rapids! Running on the water's surface! Climbing the cage! The top three each have their own way of handling the obstacle, each using their quirks to their fullest extent! Now, how will 1-A's President rise to the challenge - whoa!"

Without slowing down, Hachiman charged the 'river' shore, aiming not for the distant gate at the end of the pool but for the underwater shortcut straight ahead. With a huge jump, he dove at the water, and all of a sudden in midair he grew to the size of a giant. A few students looked like they were shouting in dismay as Giant-Form Hachiman hit the water and they got splashed by the huge impact. Between the momentum he got from falling and the fact that he started to dolphin kick after he hit the water, Hachiman sank like a rock. Present Mic went wild. "It looks like Hikigaya-san is using a giant growth quirk to get down to the gate quickly! But at that size, he won't be able to get through the gate, so will he - yes! He's shrinking while he's holding onto the edge of the gate! Using shapeshifting to move is pretty advanced Quirk usage, folks, and it requires a lot of body strength, but looks like Hikigaya-san has plenty to spare! He's caught back up with the other racers, folks, and is back in the running for first!"

"GO, NII-SAN!" I shouted, my voice getting lost in the roar of the crowds.

"Your brother is amazing!" Taishi said as I leaned back into my seat. His turquoise eyes practically sparkled with hero worship, and for some reason I felt my cheeks heating up.

To dispel the embarrassment, I rolled my eyes. "He's so antisocial he's practically a hikikomori, he's so addicted to exercise and health food that I needed your help to trick him into going out to his favorite restaurant, and he's a complete and total slacker about anything that isn't related to being a hero… but I suppose he can be pretty cool _sometimes_." I caught a flicker of white out of the corner of my eye and pointed at the screen. "Hey, it's your sister!"

"Again, it's still early on in the race, folks, so anything can happen - but we're seeing some amazing initial performances from the non-hero classes this year! We've got a couple of Support students using their hero equipment designs to keep up with the faster racers, a few groups of General Education students running as groups in order to cover each other's weaknesses," Present Mic began, only to be uncharacteristically cut off by the other announcer, Onii-San's homeroom teacher.

"One of those groups is the Tennis Club," Eraserhead interrupted. "They requested training from the students of 1-A so that they could perform well in the Sports Festival, and it looks like they took that opportunity seriously." Obligingly, the camera zoomed in on a sporty-looking girl using a blue force shield to protect herself and her teammates behind her from the wind.

"Whoa, there's not many sports clubs out there that can say they got training from a future pro hero," Present Mic nattered inanely. "If that training is effective on the court as it seems to be on the obstacle course, I foresee a lot of Hero League tennis trophies in UA's future!"

I turned to Taishi. "Your sister's doing great!" I said, patting him on the shoulder to calm him down. Really, the clenched fists and the white knuckles were a little much. The race wasn't even half over! "They even mentioned her, sort of!"

"Go, Nee-san!" Taishi shouted in lieu of a reply. "Keep it up!"

He said something else after, but I missed it because Present Mic had started up his spiel again. "If the last two obstacles were tests of speed, the third obstacle is a test of strength! To pass the Mountain Lift, students will need to be able to lift heavy gates up and out of their way - or be able to sneak by while someone else is holding a gate open! There are a lot of gates, but the ones closest to the track are the heaviest - and oh, it looks like 1-A's Hikigaya is going straight for the heaviest one!"

Despite my earlier mocking of Taishi's nerves, I couldn't help but suck in a breath as the camera zoomed in on Hachiman. In front of him, the camera clearly displayed a label showing that the gate he had chosen to lift weighed 500 kilos. I mean, I knew _I_ could lift that much. And I was sure that there were a bunch of UA students who could lift way more. The thing was, 500 kilos was the dividing line between what was humanly possible to lift without a strength quirk, and what wasn't - which is probably why they chose it. It was as good as a sign on a door saying 'Superhuman Strength Only.' Had onii-san really gotten that strong? Or was he doing that thing where he used up one of his quirks temporarily? Did he have enough quirks saved up that he could spare one on the very first event, especially a super useful one like super strength?

However he accomplished it, that super heavy door didn't slow him down at all. Neither did the next obstacle, the 'Earthen Minefield', because Onii-san did a long jump and just _flew_ over it like it was nothing. At that point, even Present Mic had to admit that my brother was awesome. "And once again, Hikigaya is continuing to dominate the lead! So far from him we've seen super speed, shape-changing, super strength, and now flight! What kind of overpowered quirk does this kid have?" I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Oh please, like anybody's going to believe that you don't know what his quirk is, you're literally one of his teachers. If you're going to sell Onii-san's good points to the heroes in the audience, would it kill you to do it without all the unnecessary showmanship?

Then again, at least he was more exciting than the other announcer. "If you asked him, he'd probably tell you it was the weakest quirk in Class 1-A," Eraserhead answered in a dull voice. Despite the dryness of the reply, I still snorted in amusement. Yeah, that sounded like Hachiman, all right. "According to his quirk paperwork, it's called 108 skills..."

Years of elementary and middle school allowed me to tune out a boring teacher explaining things I already knew like I'd been preparing for it all my life. Instead of paying attention, I leaned in towards Taishi. "Hey, hey. What does your sister's costume actually do? Did she say?" Unlike a lot of the girls from the non-hero classes, it looked like Taishi's sister hadn't skipped any of the obstacles yet, and she was still holding on with the hero classes. She and a round-cheeked girl with brown hair were neck and neck coming out of the Mountain Lift - Saki had been ahead initially, but the brown haired girl had caught up by lifting the 500 kilo gate with even less apparent effort than my brother or the green lightning kid a little bit before her had used, while Saki had to lift her slightly lighter gate with something like a folding carjack that she pulled out of her backpack.

Taishi nodded in response. "Yeah, Nee-san said it was a suit designed for disaster recovery called the Angel, with a bunch of rescue tools to help people reach injured survivors and stuff."

"It certainly seems useful," I said as the monitor showed his sister pulling out a second metal stick, this time one that unfolded into a metal detector. It was pretty interesting seeing all the ways that everybody had to pass each obstacle, and what things tripped them up. The green lightning guy had been in second place behind my brother at the Mountain Lift, for instance, but when he got to the minefield he had to slow down because he didn't have good enough control over his super strength to watch his step. Then there was the girl who walked on water, who was just as fast or faster than the green lightning guy at the obstacles, but who seemed to be slowing down on the sprints between the obstacles for some reason. On the other hand, there were a few students like the flying guy and the guy who sort of flew by exploding his hands who had gotten slowed down by the heavy gates, but who were now catching back up. (There had been a girl who could fly, too, but I didn't see her out in front with the other fliers so she was probably still back at the Mountain Lift.)

So far, there were only three people whose quirks looked like they could handle anything the course threw at them. Onii-san, obviously. Ice slidey guy, who'd had a little bit of trouble in the wind zone, but who had fought his way forward all the way back into second place. And the girl who was coming up behind them both at a startling pace. "We're halfway through the race now folks, and for the moment the top three racers have broken ahead of the pack! There's 1-A's Hikigaya Hachiman, with a quirk or combination of quirks for every obstacle! 1-A's Todoroki Shoto, skating past obstacles left and right with his incredible control over ice! And with a Fog Transformation quirk that's letting her breeze past everything in her way, catching up quickly is class 1-B's Orimoto Kaori!"

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I've never considered myself a particularly competitive person. Well, before coming to UA I had never really won at anything before, so it's possible that unbeknownst to myself I was like an uncultured philistine who declared that they didn't like ramen after only having tasted the kind that comes from a styrofoam cup. Maybe if I tried a genuine victory, I would find out I actually liked it? After all, I already knew I hated losing.

Coincidentally, rapidly approaching from behind me were two people who I didn't want to lose to. It was hard to say why I still held onto so much resentment against Orimoto Kaori. Sure, she was two-faced, a hypocrite, a 'fake hero' more concerned with her social status and the appearance of kindness than the genuine thing, but it was hardly like I was one to talk. After all, I was just as fake, just as hypocritical myself. I was completely over her romantically, so maybe at the end of the day I disliked her just because I didn't want the competition. The reason I disliked Todoroki, on the other hand, was way less ambiguous: he was a stuck-up arrogant jerk. Also, he kept throwing blasts of ice at me to try to get me to slow down.

So despite the fact that my energy was starting to flag and I was starting to tire, despite the fact that I was feeling more and more off-center due to the fusion of Ooze and Mime, I didn't slow down at all as I charged at the entrance of the fifth obstacle. Unlike the other entrances, this one was covered by what looked like some kind of blackout curtain; as I passed through it, the brief flash of light I let in illuminated a twisty maze of corridors for a split second before the curtain closed behind me and left me in pitch darkness. My first instinct was to use a quirk to give myself some light, but I quickly suppressed it, even as I raced forward through the maze by my memory of what had been revealed in that brief flash of light. As soon as I illuminated myself, I would reveal my position and Todoroki would probably shoot a wave of ice at me. More to the point, even if neither Todoroki nor Orimoto attacked me, if I lit up the area they'd be able to see, too. If I could come up with a way to make it through the obstacle without light, I could maybe use the chance to widen my lead.

That thought in mind, I stopped channeling Stockpile and swapped two of my Ooze tendrils over to Tokoyami's Dark Shadow quirk. In the pitch blackness, the original version of his quirk would probably be completely uncontrollable - I'd be surprised if he didn't skip this obstacle - but in exchange for my weakened copy of the quirk being completely useless in any kind of light, in the darkness it powered up into near-usability. As dark as it was, I felt the quirk activate more than I saw it; all of a sudden there was a gentle tugging sensation on my navel, and a strange echo to my thoughts and emotions. I probably didn't need to say it out loud, but I did anyway. "Find us a way out of here," I told it, and pretty shortly thereafter found myself being tugged along by the quirk-shadow coming from my navel.

As clever as an idea as it was, though, I wasn't able to get through the obstacle before I started hearing a regular pop, pop, pop; it was as if someone was setting off firecrackers every few seconds to see by. A shudder went through one of the walls I was tracing with my hand to avoid getting lost, as if someone had run into it at high speeds; I suddenly realized that the excess power from Stockpile that Midoriya's body couldn't contain was probably bright enough to see by as well. In short, my light advantage was about to be a moot point, if it hadn't been already. Disregarding stealth, I quickly bared my teeth in a savage grin, producing just enough faint light with two copies of the Megawatt Smile quirk that I could actually see to move.

In the end, I fought my way out of the maze not having gained ground over my pursuers, but actually having lost it instead. Sure, I had maybe given Todoroki and Orimoto a harder time than they'd have had if I'd used lights from the start, but in doing so I had been forgetting about the other 237 students in the race. I was still in first place, but the hard-won lead I had acquired at the start of the race had evaporated, leaving me within range of everyone else's attempts at sabotage. Of course, I wasn't the only target, just the most prominent one - as one student after another left the fifth obstacle, quirks started flying left and right. The road to the sixth obstacle wound up half breakneck sprint, half grand melee as the best hero students at UA began battling me and each other for the lead.

KRAKOOM! "Get back here, DEKU!" Even with an explosion ringing in my ears, I could still hear Bakugo's shout and the PAPAPAPAPA of superstrength feet slapping the pavement. In a flash of green lightning, Midoriya raced past me, only to have to swerve wildly as the STKSTKSTK of cracking crystals heralded the creation of a wall of ice right in his path. Between the facts that I was going a little bit slower than Midoriya and that I was a little further behind him, I had enough time to jump and hurdle over the wall. In midair I had enough time to look behind me, and I saw an enormous fogbank racing after the four of us, almost making it look like we were all trying to outrun the pyroclasmic dust cloud of a volcano. While I wouldn't be immediately incinerated if Orimoto caught up to me, I knew full well that if she caught me, not only would it be incredibly difficult to see where I was going, but there was a chance she could materialize her hands and feet inside the cloud to trip me as I ran.

The good news was that on flat ground, it seemed like I was faster than her. The bad news was that there were three obstacles left, one of which we were about to enter. I knew for a fact, having copied her quirk, that there was barely anything that could slow Orimoto down other than high winds; unfortunately I couldn't really say the same for myself. I wound up having to pull off a swerve of my own as Bakugo passed me and was the first person into the sixth obstacle; to avoid being blown up by his explosive backwash I attuned two copies of Kirishima's quirk and one of Tetsutetsu's. I put my arms up in front of my face to protect it and flexed my skin - it was a little bit like deliberately trying to give myself goosebumps - and managed to grow a silvery dusting of almost fishlike scales just in time for Bakugo to launch himself into the air with another BOOM.

Despite not being at ground zero of the blast and it not being a particularly large explosion by Bakugo's standards, I still found myself staggering. The shockwave buffeted my body, and small pieces of gravel impacted my reinforced skin painfully. Around the dust and debris, however, I saw the next obstacle. Giant robots lumbered into view, multiple mechanical menaces that resembled the zero-pointer from the opening exam, accompanied by even more robots of a smaller size. They were intimidating. They loomed. And not one of the five of us at the head of the race slowed down as we charged towards them.

What even was my life right now? I didn't even know what was worse, the fact that I had thought that inventing a quirk combo specifically to take down killer robots was a good idea, or the fact that it was actually about to come in handy. Dropping my Fish Scales, I grabbed Backdraft's Hydro Cannon, Mina Ashido's Acid, and Kaminari's Electrification quirk. Electricity and Water were a well known combination, of course, but the addition of an acid solution to the water made it an even better conductor, and the stickiness of the fluid Mina's quirk could excrete also helped there keep from being any breaks in the current. Ahead of me, Bakugo blew past the robots with a shout of "Out of my way!" and several subsequent explosions; I took advantage to run up to an already off-balance robot and hit it in the leg servos with a 12,000-Volt liquid stun gun. It was hard to tell whether I short circuited the whole robot or just its leg but either way the result was the same, it never recovered its balance and fell in a cacophonous heap. Midoriya opportunistically sped by me as the robot fell, and the two of us passed the second robot just as Todoroki froze it in place.

With an elated grin I started slaughtering my way through the mechanical enemies ahead of me. All it took was one touch from my Short Circuit quirk combo to knock a robot out, and even the steadily increasing nausea from using the Ooze-Mime combo couldn't discourage my happiness from the fact that I'd found yet another way to make my quirks useful even at the base level. After incapacitating five or six of the smaller robots, though, I suddenly realized the combo's fatal flaw. It didn't make me any faster. Midoriya kept getting further into the lead ahead of me, Todoroki and Bakugo both passed me, and every time my head turned I could see fog in my peripheral vision. With a grimace, I abandoned the Short Circuit combo for my plan B. Two tendrils to Giant Growth, one tendril to Beast Form; I didn't have a fancy name for the combination yet but there weren't many physical obstacles that being a five and a half meter tall juggernaut of solid muscle couldn't solve.

Bodily throwing robots out of the way where I couldn't just outrun them, by the end of the obstacle I had I caught back up to Midoriya, Bakugo, and Todoroki. From behind them, I could see all three were clearly starting to tire. Bakugo's hands were shaking and he was using his explosions judiciously; Todoroki was starting to frost over and was running stiffly. Stockpile was a perpetual motion machine of power, so Midoriya looked like he still had gas in the tank, but he was covered in dirt and scrapes from where he had lost control of his super strength and taken tumbles along the way. It could have been my chance to retake the lead, but unfortunately for me I wasn't feeling any better than they looked. Plan B had been plan B for a reason - combining multiple transformation quirks on top of Ooze-Mime's typical body dysphoria only exacerbated the problem. My brain was getting conflicting sensations telling it my body should be big, should be an ooze, should be an animal, and I was starting to stumble and trip as my motor centers started to forget how long my legs should be, or whether I was even supposed to have any.

So instead of just bull rushing my way into first place I hung back a little, attuning to Komachi's quirk to catch my breath and to give my brain a few minutes to recover. My body was feeling sore too; between the adrenaline at the start of the race, the multiple quick transformations I had put it through along the way, and the amount of pure effort I was running with, I was starting to feel the burn.

Two more obstacles.

I had two more chances to take the lead, two more opportunities to show off for the audience.

I could ignore how sore and nauseated I was for two more obstacles, at least.

Midoriya, Bakugo, and Todoroki all made it into the seventh obstacle ahead of me; unfortunately, of the three of them, only Midoriya had to slow down. The seventh obstacle was composed of a 'swamp' of water about thirty feet down, made crossable by bunch of small platforms which were connected to each other by tightropes and narrow bridges. Nets of vines also hung from the ceiling in places, possibly intended to slow down fliers, possibly there so students could try their Tarzan impressions. It was just the thing to slow down someone with super strength and control issues; Todoroki, on the other hand, could make ice bridges between platforms, while Bakugo could just jump and course correct with his explosions to land in the right spots. I couldn't just fly from island to island across the whole course without dropping my sister's quirk and risking throwing up, but if I attuned 2 ooze tendrils to Power Triangle I could use that girl's flight powers to fake having perfect balance, which would have to be good enough.

As I jogged on the tightrope toward the far side of the 'swamp' I could clearly see the expression on Midoriya's face fall as first Todoroki, then Bakugo passed him. As I passed him myself, walking on top of the tightrope that he was hanging from, I could see the tears forming in his eyes, the frustration and panic that he had as he fell further and further behind the lead. He clearly knew he wasn't going fast enough, and yet he still didn't try to trip me up as I passed him. Was it just that he didn't want to lose to Bakugo? Was he afraid of disappointing his dad? Whatever it was, it clearly wasn't enough for him to start resorting to foul play, but he was obviously upset just the same.

I sighed. When I thought about it from Midoriya's perspective, I didn't really want Bakugo to be able to gloat about being in first any more than he did. Plus, having the next All Might owe me a favor wouldn't exactly be a bad thing, right? Thinking that, as I got to the next concrete bollard in the middle of the 'swamp', I stopped running, fell to my hands and knees, and combined Stockpile with Cementoss-sensei's Cement quirk. Slowly but surely, the ground reshaped itself underneath me, one spar of cement shooting up and forward from the bollard towards the end of the obstacle like a ramp, while a second spar extended flat backwards toward Midoriya to shorten his climb and as a counterweight to keep the bollard from falling over.

"What are you doing, Hikigaya?" Midoriya shouted even as he reached out towards the spar coming from him. "You don't have to help me!"

I scowled at him. "Shut up and jump for it already, Midoriya!" Stop acting like I'm such a nice person. "I need to jump to catch up too, so if you're not going to use the platform then get out of my way!"

To his credit, Midoriya did. In three fast super-strength steps, he hurtled up the impromptu ramp I had created, and then he jumped for his life towards the far wall of the 'swamp' chasm. He managed it by the skin of his teeth, landing in an ungainly attempt at a recovery roll just a few inches from the edge of the water hazard, then popping back up covered in dirt to continue sprinting forward, now solidly a few tens of meters ahead of Todoroki and Bakugo. I followed him a few seconds later, having used Stockpile's strength-boosting power to get up to speed and then Hayama's flight quirk once I was in midair to stretch out the long jump even farther. Apparently Todoroki was irritated at my interference and having helped Midoriya out, because as I was about to land he created a sizeable wall of ice between me and the exit. I was able to climb it without too much trouble, but he killed my momentum enough that I left the obstacle once again solidly in fourth place.

As I reached the top of the wall of ice, I could see that by this point, either too many people had reached Orimoto for her to hold them all back, or she had never been trying to sabotage other racers in the first place. Just at a glance I could see Iida awkwardly balancing on a tightrope with his calf thrusters, Asui crawling along a rope on all fours faster than some people could run, a girl from 1-B practically swinging from her vine-like hair, and Yuigahama bouncing along on the constructs she had created from the majority of her gym uniform. It was enough of a sight to let me know that I didn't have time to hesitate.

The sprint to the last obstacle was short, and unlike the rest of the obstacles it wasn't caged in. It was an artificial mountain with a gate at the top and multiple ways to scale it. To the left was a long and winding staircase that Bakugo was completely ignoring in favor of just blasting himself to the top. To the right was a rock-climbing wall, where Todoroki was using his ice to create additional handholds in order to haul himself up as fast as he could. And in the middle was a long walled empty column, almost like a three-sided elevator shaft, that Midoriya was wall-jumping his way up at tremendous speeds. Frankly, I didn't have a prayer of catching up to any of the three of them - but, eh. Fourth place behind the son of All Might, the son of Endeavor, and the first place finisher on the entrance exam was still pretty respectable. With that thought in mind I bit the inside of my cheek to center myself and dropped my connection to Komachi's quirk so that I could launch myself up to the top of the mountain.

My stomach roiled, my gorge heaved, but it was all worth it. I skipped all of the tedious climbing everyone else would have to do and made it up to the top, firmly in - well, fifth place, because Hayama had flown in from behind me, moving about twenty times as fast as I was, but given that I'd barely touched any of my saved up quirks I was still feeling pretty pleased with myself. I wasn't the only one pleased with me either. As I ran down the tunnel from the top of the mountain back into the stadium and crossed the finish line, the audience's ongoing roars of approval for Midoirya and the rest swelled for a second in acknowledgement of my presence.

Fifth place. It wasn't a win, but it wasn't a loss either.

It was pretty okay.

The roar of the crowd swelled again as a cloud of mist erupted from the finish line and coalesced back into the shape of a frizzy-haired girl, attractively red in the face from exertion and breathing heavily. She smiled and waved to the crowd before coming over to stand with the rest of us who had already finished, eliciting another round of applause from the crowd in a way that made me belatedly realize that I should probably have done the same thing. As I was awkwardly trying to decide whether it was too late to try and look friendly, I was saved by Orimoto coming over to me specifically.

Surprisingly, she gave me what by every indication was a sincere smile. "Good race, Hikigaya! Who knew you were this fast? I can just picture everyone from Jaku Middle's faces! Hahaha, hilarious!"

Despite the shock and confusion I felt at Orimoto behaving in a friendly fashion towards me, I couldn't help but snort in amusement. "Think any of them will try to invite me to a middle school reunion?" I asked sarcastically.

"Invite you to - hahahaha!" Orimoto Kaori kept laughing. "Oh my god, that's so wrong, but how are you so right?"

I didn't know how to reply to that. I couldn't laugh along with her; every time I looked at her I still felt an echo of pain in my chest from how I had felt after being rejected. I still remembered Zaimokuza awkwardly consoling me, rattling off examples of historical generals and fictional figures who had been rejected in one way or another over the years, only to rise up again later after finding someone better in the future. And I still remembered how she had covertly sneered when I said that I wanted to go to UA.

But as she stood in front of me, laughing openly and freely, I nevertheless came to the unpleasant realization that maybe I wasn't as completely over Orimoto Kaori as I had thought.


	16. Even Side Characters Have Their Moment

A/N: Man, it feels good to be posting the abbreviation for "Author's Note" again. Due to work, illness, and writer's block, this chapter has been a long time in coming. I'd like to say thank you to everyone on Spacebattles who kept the discussion alive, an even bigger thank you to those who contributed omakes to inspire my imagination and tide everyone through the drought, and an especially huge thank you to my newfound trio of beta readers and editors, who kept me company and troubleshot for me through all 20,000 words of this chapter.

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Raising his eyebrows up nearly to the base of his spiky yellow hair, Present Mic turned off the microphones and let out a low whistle as he turned to me. "Damn, Shota. What are you feeding those kids?" Below us, one student after another ran into the stadium. Most of my Class had already made it into the stadium, while Kan's were still straggling in one at a time.

I turned to Hizashi and shrugged. "Ask Lunch Rush," I said, deliberately winding him up a little by pretending to miss his point. I was still a little ticked at him for shanghaiing me into being his co-announcer again despite the fact that I wasn't any good at it the first time, but according to him it was a 'tradition' now. Damn it Hizashi, me doing you a favor once is not a tradition! Well, twice, now… ugh, this is going to be a thing, isn't it?

"No, man, I'm serious!" Predictably, Hizashi's volume increased as he got excited, and I couldn't help but smirk a bit into the concealing folds of my capture scarf. "All five of the top five? Eight of the top ten? Sixteen of the top twenty? You're obviously doing something right."

"Don't be too impressed," I said dully, watching Class B jogging past the finish line one after another. "Kan-san told me his kids were planning on racing slow in the preliminaries so they could scope out Class A's quirks and make a comeback in round 2."

Hizashi snickered, matching my sentiments exactly. "Let me guess, you conveniently 'forgot' to mention all the prep work your class had already done?"

I tried not to look too pleased with myself. "Well, originally I was planning on telling him, but then he just had to offer a friendly bet on how many students of each class would make it to the finals…"

"Are you kidding me?" Hizashi exclaimed, his eyes going so wide that I could see them behind his sunglasses. "A bet like that, when your kids have real villain experience? That's brave of him!"

I put my hand in the air and waggled it in a 'so-so' motion. "Kan's optimistic, but he's not completely unrealistic. He bet that Class B would get at least six out of sixteen spots in the finals, loser buys the winner a bottle of something decent for each spot over or under." After a second, I smirked, and Hizashi smirked back in shared camaraderie.

"I suppose I can see him thinking that might be a fair bet, especially with you not having told him what your class was up to, but from everything you've told me - oop!" Hizashi interrupted himself abruptly before flipping the microphone back on. "THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS, THERE ARE JUST A FEW SLOTS LEFT! JUST FORTY-EIGHT STUDENTS WILL BE MOVING ON TO STAGE TWO, AND WE'RE FAST APPROACHING THOSE LIMITS!"

As he turned the microphone back off, I snorted in irritation. "I still don't agree with that decision, you know."

"Eh?" Hizashi's moussed hair swept an arc through the air as he tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Weren't you the one who brought up the fact that the general education class was extra motivated this year at the planning meeting, though?"

"I was." I glowered down at the remaining students of 1-B who were just now finishing up the race. "But there are better ways to make sure that students with potential don't get overlooked than just blindly expanding the cap on the number of racers who make it to the second stage. Personally, I think getting eliminated in the preliminaries because they didn't compete as hard as the General Education kids would have been good for a few of the lazier students in the class."

"Ah, well, they're only first years," Hizashi said with a shrug. "We can't expect them to have everything figured out from the beginning. They'll learn over time."

"If they have it, anyways." I muttered darkly, only to be interrupted by a slap on the back that made me let out a grunt.

"Come on, Shota, stop being such a pessimist! We're heroes! If there isn't time, we'll make time, right?" Hizashi asked. The corner of my mouth twitched as I attempted a reassuring smile, but I couldn't help but continue frowning. "... You think it's going to get that bad, huh?"

I looked out at the kids below, seeing where a small knot of 1-A students were beginning to gather around a single student in particular. "Let me put it this way. If not for Hikigaya being in the right place at the right time, All Might and I honestly might both be dead by now."

Hizashi followed my gaze. "Speaking of pessimists, huh? Who'd have thought a kid who wrote an essay like that would've been the one to step up to the plate? Hey, is that why you argued to have him in your class? Pessimist sympathy?"

"Hardly," I denied. Despite myself, however, I couldn't help but smirk at the memory. Hizashi's jaw had dropped when he'd read The Essay; Cementoss had kept rubbing his free hand over the flat top of his head, Ectoplasm had coughed so hard his hand came away silver, and even Nezu's fur had bristled. "Like I said at the time, he met the points cutoff fair and square, and despite what the essay said, he apparently cared enough about being a hero to take the test on a broken leg, so he deserved to be given a chance." Besides, if you looked past the twisted metaphors and the relentless negativity, he was more realistic about what being a part of the hero industry actually meant than the majority of his peers... "Either he was going to shape up and stop whinging once he got in, or he wouldn't, in which case I would have had no problem tossing him out on his ass as an instructive example to the rest. Which I still won't, if he backslides."

"Brrrr!" Hizashi shivered for effect. "That's some heroic gratitude towards your savior, Shota," he said sarcastically. "Oops, there's the last of them, hold on." Switching his mic back on, he took a deep breath and once again began ranting at the top of his lungs. "AND THAT'S THE LAST STUDENT, EVERYONE! PLEASE GIVE ALL OUR RACERS A ROUND OF APPLAUSE! NOW, ARE YOU READY FOR ROUND TWO? I SAID, ARE YOU READY? WELL, THAT'S TOO BAD, BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO TAKE US A MINUTE WITH ALL THE STAGE SKIP PENALTIES TO FIGURE OUT THE FINAL RUNTIMES! STRETCH YOUR LEGS AND GRAB SOME SNACKS, FOLKS, THE NEXT EXCITING CHALLENGE WILL BE STARTING IN JUST A FEW MINUTES!" After he turned it off, he sat back at me and raised an eyebrow. "Would you really be willing to kick Hikigaya out, even after everything he did at the USJ? I mean, you've fake-expelled kids before, but what you said sounded like you would even kick him out for real."

"Damn straight I would," I said bluntly. "And I'd be doing him a favor. This industry..." I paused for a second, remembering the sickening crack I had felt when the Nomu piledrived me into the concrete. X-rays had later shown a hairline fracture in my skull and my orbital bones. I had been one good hit away from blindness or death. "... The hero industry isn't a place that someone ambivalent about it should stay."

Hizashi sighed in disappointment. "Like I said, Shota. They're first years. Not everybody walks through the doors of UA knowing for sure, 100%, that they really want to be a hero. It's not just skills that we teach here. Hell, I remember you being kind of ambivalent about things when you first started, and look at you now!" Hizashi wasn't usually one to scold or to argue, but he had a point.

I shrugged and settled back into the chair. "You're not wrong. I used to be a cynical little shit. If I hadn't made friends with a certain pair of idiots, I might not have been suited to be a hero in the end either." Predictably, the compliment soothed Hizashi's ruffled feathers - but, as usual, the reference to a fallen friend killed the mood even further. As the sole surviving member of the 'pair of idiots' that I had just mentioned settled back into his seat next to me, I looked back out onto the field, seeing the ever-growing knot of 1-A students. So far, at least, none of them had experienced a painful loss like that one… and if I did my job properly, as long as they were students in my care, none of them ever would. I closed my eyes to rest them for a second, offering a last piece of consolation to the still-pouting Hizashi. "Don't worry. I'm not about to do anything drastic. As a matter of fact, I'm not too worried about having to expel Hikigaya. From what I can tell, he's got some pretty good friends of his own."

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"Hikigaya!" Bakugo's words dripped with palpable menace. He was never the sort of person who would glance in a direction when he could glare at it instead, but even adjusting for that fact his eyes were locked onto me with the simmering anger of twin volcanoes about to erupt. "What. The. Fuck!"

I turned away from Orimoto Kaori, muttering "sorry." Which I wasn't. Of all the excuses I could possibly have found to escape my awkward conversation with her, I admit that dealing with a pissed-off Bakugo wasn't exactly my first choice, but what the hell, I'd take it! "What's up, Bakugo? You're going to have to be a little more specific."

His right arm shot out in an accusatory gesture towards Midoriya, who was busy being congratulated by Uraraka, Tokoyami, and Iida. "Fucking helping Deku? Fucking again? What the fuck, Hikigaya? I'm gonna fucking kill you!"

Yeah, that was specific enough. Uncomfortably, I shrugged. "I was helping myself, he just took advantage of it. What's the big deal? It's only the first round."

"What's the big deal?!" Bakugo yelled in disbelief. "He beat me! Because of you! Again!"

"Hikki! Bakubaku! Good job you guys!" Again, I blessed the heavens for yet another timely interruption, this time in the form of a smiling Yuigahama bouncing over in our direction. I mean, using her pant legs which she had turned into fabric springs, not the other kind of bouncing. Though, that kind of bouncing was there too, and hard to avoid noticing, especially given the way that her sweat plastered her shirt to her torso. After a second of staring, I hastily tore my eyes away from Yuigahama's Yuigahamas, only to notice Bakugo doing the same thing a heartbeat later.

As my eyes met Bakugo's, I could see that the anger in them had faded slightly, short-circuited into something more like dull irritation. "Stop calling me weird shit, Airhead," Bakugo muttered.

For her part, Yuigahama had clearly noticed the strange atmosphere, because as she stopped right next to the two of us, she blinked curiously. "Eh? Is something wrong?"

After a few seconds of Bakugo grinding his teeth in silence, I shrugged. "Bakugo's mad he didn't get first."

"Ah! Don't mind, Bakugo! I saw the finish, you were super close!" Yuigahama bubbled excitedly, giving him an encouraging slap on the back. As she did, I saw Bakugo glaring at me, getting ready to unleash another round of accusations, but before he could Yuigahama kept talking. "At first I was sure it was going to be you or Todoshouto, but then Dekkun took advantage of you fighting each other and was just like, woosh!"

Seizing the opportunity to redirect Bakugo to another target, I decided to chime in. "You know, if Todoroki had slowed you down a little less, Midoriya probably wouldn't have been able to catch up with you."

Bakugo looked over his shoulder at Todoroki, who was currently standing off to one side, responding monosyllabically to Hayama's well-intentioned attempts at conversation. After a second, he clenched his fists. For a second, I thought I was safe, and that his attention had been successfully diverted.

Unfortunately, Yukinoshita Yukino chose that exact second to catch back up. "Hikigaya-san." Her voice was as cold as the air that typically surrounded her, and I looked up to see her wearing a sports uniform rimed with frost, a few patches of it more liberally coated with ice. "Before you perform such crude feats as taking on an enormous size in order to dive into the water, I would recommend developing a level of situational awareness superior to that of the common earthworm." Her eyes skewered me like a butterfly on a pin, and despite the fact that she was warming herself up and so not using her quirk at all, I still felt a shiver go down my spine.

"There, there, Yukinon, I'm sure Hikki didn't mean to splash you this time…" Yuigahama said in a doomed attempt at peacekeeping.

After all, even if Yukinoshita had been the forgiving type, with Bakugo right there to salt the wound - "What's the matter, Ice Queen? Did your loyal subjects start getting rebellious?"

"Oh?" Yukinoshita put her hand to her mouth in false surprise. "I'm sorry, Mr. Second Place, I didn't notice you standing there." - well, there was never any chance that things weren't going to turn out this way.

"Shut the hell up!" Bakugo snarled. "I don't want to hear that from you, uh -" he briefly whirled around to stare at the scoreboard for a few seconds, before whirling back to her. "Ms. Seventeenth!"

"So that's what happened!" Yuigahama chimed in, a thoughtful tone in her voice. "I was pretty surprised when I got in ahead of Yukinon, but if Hikki splashed you by accident that makes sense."

For someone who regularly adopted an attitude of being both perfect and used to being perfect, Yukinoshita sure was uncomfortable being directly praised. "That's not - Yui, you made it into the top ten! You don't have to feel surprised at being faster than me."

"What? No, no, no." Yuigahama said, waving Yukinoshita's reply away in a display of reciprocal compliment-awkwardness. "I just got lucky. If the teachers hadn't put in that water section I'm sure Yukinon would have done way better than me."

Good going, Yuigahama! Inevitably, it's the teachers who are to blame! I nodded emphatically in agreement. "Right? And would it have killed them to put the wind obstacle after the water obstacle? My clothes are still damp."

"How inconvenient for you, Hikigaya-san." Ah, crap. Open mouth, insert foot. "It is very uncomfortable having to run a race with moisture clinging to your clothes, isn't it?" Damn it, what was with me today? As Yukinoshita's faint blush vanished and her shy expression narrowed down into a cutting glare, I immediately resolved to just keep my mouth shut until the next challenge started and distracted everyone. It's not like they would keep holding a grudge after something else got their attention, right?

I looked from Yukinoshita, to Bakugo, and back. Yeah, I was screwed. Both of them were glaring at me now, and I silently prayed for someone, anyone to rescue me -

"Hikigaya-san!" Suddenly, a tired yet cheerful-looking Yaoyorozu Momo answered my prayers as she rushed over to our group. "And of course, Bakugo-san, Yukinoshita-san, Yuigahama-san, good job, everyone!"

"Yao~mo~mo, I already told you, you don't have to be so formal!" Yuigahama chided. "And good job to you, too! What brings you over here?"

"Hikigaya-san!" Inwardly, I groaned. How did I manage to offend almost everyone I knew in one single race? As my mind frantically worked to try to remember if I had kicked dirt into her face or something, Yaoyorozu short-circuited my panic by bending forward into a formal bow. "Thank you very much!"

"...Hah?" I replied wittily.

"Actually, in addition to thanking you, I feel as though I need to apologize as well," Yaoyorozu explained, her eyes shining with an … unusual fervent light. "When you had me help you work up profiles on all the Class 1-B students, and then even the General Education students, I was originally a little hesitant, and I doubted you a little bit, and I never, ever should have, because if you hadn't done so?" Yaoyorozu flung her arm in the direction of a pair of students who had just finished the race. The purple-haired midget from the General Education classes appeared to have used his adhesive hair quirk to stick himself to a hapless fox-faced redhead from 1-B. His face was thoroughly bruised, and he appeared to have a black eye, but despite his injuries and the fact that the race was over, he was persisting in lecherously clinging to her back and nuzzling his face against her. Yaoyorozu looked at the redhead, who had a visibly freaked-out look of disgust on her face as she attempted to pry the perverted gnome off of her body, and turned back to me. "If you hadn't warned me, I could have wound up like that."

There was a moment of silence. Yukinoshita and Yuigahama's faces both twisted into identical expressions of revulsion, while Bakugo's was more a look of utter disdain. I looked from the diminutive pervert and his victim back to Yaoyorozu. "You're welcome," I said in a deadpan voice.

Another moment of horrified silence passed. "Congratulations, Hikigaya," Yukinoshita said, still staring at the terrifying trainwreck. "I think I'm finally going to have to stop implying that you're a moral degenerate. Even you don't deserve to be compared to THAT."

"Oi," I protested, despite knowing that it wouldn't do any good. "Say that without the 'even'."

Bakugo exhaled sharply through his nose as the redhead tried and failed yet again to dislodge the groper limpet on her back. "Hikigaya. Didn't that handout of yours say that chick had super strength if she stopped flying? How the hell is he still attached?"

That was an excellent question. I took a second to compare both of their quirks in my head, and arrived at an answer. "He doesn't have super strength exactly, but the fact that he has a normal person's amount of strength packed into such a small frame gives him a lot of leverage. And… well… her quirk does work by multiplying the user's base level strength..."

"Hmph. That's what she gets for skipping arm day," Bakugo said with a sneer.

Yuigahama wrapped her arms around herself in discomfort at the ongoing scene. "I feel kinda bad just standing here watching this. Shouldn't we go over and help her?"

"I could make a crowbar," Yaoyorozu offered. "If it fails to pry him off the normal way, as a last-ditch effort it could always be applied sharply to the back of his skull."

Before the sight of the girl's predicament could fully tempt my previously innocent vice-president down the path of H*lf-L*fe themed violence, however, one of the redhead's fellow 1-B students solved the problem by grabbing his entire body with a single oversized hand and threatening to squeeze. Normally I would scoff at heroes' first resorts to problems always being violent, but upon further consideration I was beginning to see the merits to that sort of behavior.

"Hachiman-kun! Katsuki-kun! Yukino-chan, Yui-chan, Momo-chan! Good job, everyone!" Suddenly, a ray of sunshine illuminated the entire field, causing formerly dull colors to suddenly glow with bright and vibrant life. The fact that a cloud happened to finish passing by just as Totsuka came running up, his eyes bright with excitement and his face faintly flushed with exertion was probably just a coincidence, right? "Thank you all so much for your help!"

Yukinoshita smiled politely. "Our help would have been useless if you hadn't put in the necessary time and effort yourself, Saika-kun. Don't discount your own hard work."

"I suppose that's true, but you guys still helped a lot! It's always more fun to do that sort of thing with friends, right?" Totsuka asked, his eyes wide and sparkling.

Bakugo scoffed and looked to the side. Wait, was he uncomfortable? For someone who got so high and mighty about calling people by their first names, he sure was tsundere about being called someone's friend, huh? "Don't go thanking us yet, moron," he said gruffly. "What place did you get? Did you make it to the next round, or not?"

"Um, well, we were sixty-first through sixty-third through the door, but if you look at the leaderboard most of the people who aren't heroes who are in front of us all skipped stages, and we didn't skip any, so I think we probably have... a pretty... good chance?" Totsuka replied, initially energetic but slowly faltering under Bakugo's disapproving glare.

"So, you're saying maybe you succeeded. Maybe you made it to the goal that you were working towards." Bakugo said, harshly but with what passed for him as a neutral tone of voice. "And you won't know for sure until something outside of your control happens. Are you satisfied with that?"

Totsuka blinked. "I… well… I suppose if I do make it to the next round, then I would be?" He said, sounding slightly unsure of himself.

Meanwhile, Yukinoshita and Yuigahama were both glaring at Bakugo, who eventually noticed the disapproving atmosphere and let out an exasperated sigh. "Look, I'm not saying you guys didn't do pretty decent for extras. I'm just saying, if you really want to run over and say 'thank you' first chance you get, next time you should aim to place in the 40s." He paused. "Or 30s. Because I sure as hell don't want to be thanked for something I didn't actually get done."

Slowly, Totsuka's face broke into a smile. "I see! Thank you, Katsuki-kun!" Damn it Totsuka, don't encourage Bakugo! Even if you did correctly manage to interpret his criticism as a backhanded compliment and encouragement, if you respond to him as though he said something normal, he'll never learn that he has a communication problem!

Predictably, Bakugo compounded his errors by waving Totsuka's thanks away with a disinterested expression on his face. "Like I said, thank me when you know there's something worth thanking me for."

"ALLLLLL RIGHT EVERYONE! THANK YOU ALL FOR WAITING!" Present Mic's echoed from the speakers, and a frisson of excitement pulsed through the arena. "WITHOUT WASTING ANY MORE TIME, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, HERE ARE YOUR TOP FORTY-EIGHT RACERRRRS!"

As the stadium displays flashed to life, Totsuka's hands came up to his chest, and he bit his lip adorably as he started scanning up from the bottom. Despite the distraction off to the side, however, I managed to tear my eyes away to do the same, only from the top down. I knew my own results, of course, but… I let out a small sigh of relief as I finished counting names. All twenty members of 1-A were present and accounted for. And just as I was about to check for Totsuka's results…

"Thank you, Bakugo-san!"

Well, that really said it all.

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Say what you will for UA as an educational institution, but they knew how to get things done in a hurry. It was barely more than a minute or two before the students who hadn't made the cut finished taking their assigned places in the stands, and Midnight was once again standing in front of the display. "The second round of the U.A. Sports Festival First-Year Stage is," she said, pausing as the display changed to reveal a familiar graphic. Once again, the U.A. Sports Festival's unofficial mascot, 'Fixed Roulette-kun', has made his appearance! You can do it, Fix-kun! Throw off the shackles of tyranny, and decide who makes it to the finals with a poetry slam, or a shiritori competition! Finally, Fix-kun settled on a final graphic, and Midnight finished her sentence, "with the 48 students moving on from the first round, a Cavalry Battle!" It's okay, Fix-kun. I understand. If Midnight-sensei was standing right next to me with a whip in her hand, I wouldn't dare to act up either!

Unsurprisingly, not a single student from either hero class had failed to find themselves in the top 48, although I noted with a certain Bakugo-like smugness that unlike with Class A, there were a few class 1-B students who had come in behind non-hero students. What was a surprise was that in addition to five students from the general education department - many of whom were students who didn't quite make the cut for the Heroics program, and so could plausibly compete with those of us in the hero track - two students from UA's Support Course had made it in, as had a single student from the Business Course. In theory, the fact that four out of the eight non-hero students were friends and acquaintances of mine (in addition to the trio from the Tennis Club, Kawasaki Saki had made it into the top 48) should have made me feel happy for their success. In practice, the fact that I had worked up elaborate plans ahead of time to keep anybody not from Class 1-A out of the finals just meant there were four more people who I was going to be undeservingly screwing over.

If the teachers allowed it, anyways. All of the game-rigging and underhanded shenanigans that I wracked my brain to come up with would be useless if the teachers did something as simple as declaring that people 'must team up with at least one person from another class'. If that happened, then I would be out there trying to not just compete but distinguish myself against forty-seven other students, pretty much all of whom had better quirks than I did, even the General Education students. So as Midnight introduced the format of the second round, I was listening with bated breath. Each headband worth points according to your team members' placement in the race? No problem. First place finisher of the race's headband is worth a guaranteed pass to the next round? Well, if I hadn't set anything special up then everyone would be gunning for Deku, but as it stood, I was happy to let him act as bait. Teams of no more than four students, headbands around your neck, riders could fly but if someone forced them to the ground they'd have to give up any headbands they possessed to the person who brought them down, fifteen minutes to pick teams… I let out a sigh of relief mixed with curdled guilt. I'd gotten away with it.

"And those fifteen minutes start… now!" Almost instantly, the field was a mess of people rushing around, trying to meet up with their friends or to convince more powerful students that they should be allowed to sponge off of them, and generally shouting with frantic energy. That is, everywhere other than the 1-A students. Not one by one, but by twos and fours, my class gravitated towards me, forming up in a loose circle surrounding me.

For a second, no-one spoke. "... so in theory as long as Ii don't lose my headband i move on to the next round but that isn't a guarantee so maybe a strategy where Ii focus on getting points from other teams would be better but then again there's also no guarantee that i would be able to get enough especially if all the other teams from 1-a collected more than me because they would get less pressure at the start and then it wouldn't be nice to target them so i should probably focus on escape and evasion which would mean picking -"

"Psst! Deku!" Mercifully, Uraraka put a stop to Midoriya's mumbling with a sharp poke to his ribcage.

"Hieee!" He shouted in surprise before looking around and getting ahold of his surroundings. "Oh! Uh, sorry, right. Um, so… how are we picking teams? There's twenty of us, and only sixteen spots..."

Oh. Maybe that was why the teachers hadn't done anything to stop us. All of my clever planning and scheming, and I had completely overlooked that single, simple fact. Somebody was going to be left out, even in the best of scenarios. "Well, Hikigaya?" Todoroki asked coldly. "How do you plan to make this work? I don't think anybody here is going to meekly roll over and sacrifice themselves for you so that you can go on to be famous. I know I certainly won't."

I froze. I had talked myself into accepting the fact that I was going to be sacrificing other people for my own satisfaction and revenge by focusing on the 'fact' that it was going to benefit my classmates as well, but ... I couldn't really deny Todoroki's accusations. At the end of the day, that's what all of this maneuvering was for. Luckily, I was a sufficiently convincing liar that when it looked like I was in danger of being 'misunderstood', a nice guy leapt to my defense. "There's no need for that," Hayama offered with a smile. "If we settle into five teams of four, then all we have to do is say that whenever someone finds themselves in fifth place, they're allowed to try to grab headbands from the other four teams, especially if there aren't any headbands left from the other classes to grab." The expression on his face turned slightly sharper, and he looked Todoroki straight in the eye. "Personally, Todoroki-san? If you think your team is behind, I'm fine with you coming at me anytime."

As sounds of assent met Hayama's plan, Iida raised his hand enthusiastically. "If I may, members of Class 1-A, I think we should discuss team compositional strategies! Obviously, in a competition of this nature, synergies between classmates will be of the utmost importance! Therefore, we should -"

"Um, Hikigaya-san?" I felt a tap on my shoulder, and reflexively turned to see Kawasaki Saki standing behind me. Iida's voice behind me fell silent, and I could feel the oppressive weight of nineteen pairs of eyes staring at my back in curiosity. Kawasaki herself didn't appear to be expecting so much attention, because she almost immediately blushed. Damn it, don't come up here looking all shy like that! Everyone is totally going to misunderstand! "I, uh," she stammered for a second, before she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "I came to ask you if you had a team yet, Hikigaya-san." It probably would have come off as confident and self-assured, except that due to the awkward circumstances she couldn't quite manage to look me in the eye, instead turning her face to the side to look back at the majority of the other students. "I figured since you have a lot of quirks, and I have a lot of useful tools in my Support costume, if we worked together that would give us a lot of options. What do you think?"

What did I think? Well, the last time a pretty girl specifically requested to be on the same team as me for something, it was so she could dump all the work of cleaning the classroom on me and leave early with her friends, so the fact that you were actually asking sincerely almost made me agree right away. Despite myself, I felt my face heat up. "I, uh… I don't think I can," I said with regret. "I'm still working out the details, but, uh, I already made some plans with people ahead of time…"

I almost didn't catch the slight drooping of her shoulders before Kawasaki shrugged and made a 'hmph' of dissatisfaction. "Oh well. Your loss."

"I-" I called out as she turned to leave, wanting to say something but not knowing what. "Uh, if I wind up with an extra spot on my team or can't find one, I'll come find you?" Even as I said it, I knew it would be obvious that it was just a kindly lie.

Despite that, Kawasaki Saki received the offer not with a look of gratitude, nor a hurt expression, but rather a wry smile. "Better hope my team doesn't fill up first. See you in the finals, Hikigaya."

"You too!" I called after her departing back. I turned back to Class A, and then immediately regretted it, because as bad as those stares had been boring into my back, they were infinitely worse face-to-face. "What?" I asked peevishly.

Ashido Mina let out an excited whistle, her eyes sparkling at the sudden potential for gossip. "You've been holding out on us, Class Pres! Who was she?"

"Dude, giving up being on a team with your girlfriend, just to stick with your class?" I couldn't help but overhear Kirishima muttering to Denki, and a glance in his direction showed an emotional expression. "That's so hardcore!" I felt my eyebrow twitch.

"She's just an acquaintance of mine from middle school," I said through gritted teeth. "Is this really the time?"

"No," Yukinoshita replied to my rhetorical question. "No, it is not. We don't have time to be getting distracted," she said with an accusatory glare in my direction.

Oi, it's not like I interrupted things on purpose! Someone else might, though. "Speaking of which," I said, looking back over my shoulder at the other classes, specifically eyeing a student with messy purple hair. "Shoji. Mind keeping a few eyes out? Not everybody coming over to talk to us is necessarily going to be doing so with good intentions."

"Whoa, that's the president for you!" Tobe said excitedly. "Or maybe he's being more like a team captain right now? Oh! I know, he's the Hikitaicho!"

"So, the maximum team size is four people," I interrupted, doing my best to move things along before that awful nickname stuck. "In theory, that means we should probably split into five teams of four each."

"I concur," Yaoyorozu chimed in, though rather than sounding definitive there was a slightly distracted tone to her voice. Her head bent in thought, she added "given the necessity for maneuverability and stability in such a contest, a three-sided support structure for the rider would be ideal. But, how are we going to assign teams?" She glanced around at the group. "While I think most of us get along with our HEART service groups, I don't think they would be ideal for this sort of contest…"

"Hmph," Bakugo said, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. "I'll tell you how. First off, we take the four weakest extras here, and shove them all in one group so they stay out of the rest of our way. Then the other four teams clean up the field, we all get into the next round, and the guys who didn't get in wind up with the consolation prize of being a part of the winning team."

There was a general recoil of rejection at that idea, but the first one to voice his disapproval was Hayama. "I don't think there's even one person in the class who all of us would agree is the weakest here," Hayama said sternly, "let alone four. And I don't think there's anybody in the class who we would all trust to decide who gets left out fairly, even the Class President." Oi, don't go bringing me into it! It's not like I came up with Bakugo's antisocial idea! "And that's completely leaving aside the fact that someone who might have a so-called 'weaker' quirk might be really useful as part of the right team."

"Tche. Fine then, Flyboy, how would you pick?" Bakugo asked sullenly.

Hayama smiled. "Well, I mean, I know who I'd want on my team. Why don't we all just talk it over and decide?"

I shook my head. As expected of an ikemen, Hayama was the type to come up with a solution that assumed everybody knew how to talk to other people, and that would leave weak and unpopular people - specifically, me - behind through the magic of collective responsibility. In the end, it was just Bakugo's plan, repackaged so that nobody had to feel guilty about it, and if I called Hayama out on it, nothing would change. Luckily, I had another equally valid objection. "That'd take too much time, and we've already wasted a few minutes. We need to decide as a group," I declared.

"How about this?" Miura interjected, before I could say anything else. "Hayama, you know who you want on your team, right? And Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, Hikigaya, you four probably have ideas about who you want too? You guys were the top five in the obstacle race, and have the five most valuable headbands... Is there anybody who would be unhappy with being on a team with one of the five of them?"

I saw the sea of shaking heads in front of me and sighed. There went my hopes of leeching off of Small Might to get into the third round. "Fine. Then, Midoriya, you pick first, and if you pick someone who the rest of us would also want on our teams… I guess we'll ask the person in question, and they can decide whose team they want to be on?"

"O-okay!" Midoriya said, before dropping his chin into his hand and beginning to mumble (inaudibly, for once) as he worked through his options. While we all waited for him, I suddenly felt a warm pressure against my shoulder. I turned to look at Yuigahama, who had for some reason bumped me with her own shoulder, and was turning to look at me with a beaming smile on her face. I raised an eyebrow to ask her what she was doing, but she just kept smiling and returned her attention to Midoriya as he finally settled on a strategy. "Uraraka, Iida, and Fumikage. Between Uraraka-chan and Iida-kun, we'll have the mobility to keep away from people after our headband or to chase it down if we lose it, and Fumikage-kun and I would provide a good mix of offense and defense."

First choice from anyone in the class, and he picks his friends. It wasn't a bad lineup, but… I managed not to frown or shake my head. "Okay, fine. Are the three of you okay with that?" Unsurprisingly, all three of them gave me firm nods, so I moved on to the next question. "Anybody want to offer one of them an alternative?"

Hayama took a step forward. "Uraraka? Care to help me build a flying team?" Midoriya's eyes bugged out wide in shock, and he slowly turned to look at the girl next to him.

She smiled sweetly, though, and rejected Hayama, causing Midoriya's eyes to water with relief. "Sorry, but I'd rather stay with Dekkun."

Despite being shot down, the flyboy ikemen didn't seem too upset at the refusal. "Fair enough."

When nobody else spoke up, I moved on to the next person in line. Damn it, how did my grand plan to coast on other peoples' momentum into the finals wind up with me picking last? I should have kicked Midoriya into the pit when I had the chance. "Bakugo, you're up next."

"Okay. Well, there's only two people in the class who won't get immediately fucked up by my explosions, so I'm taking Spiky Hair and Airhead." Bakugo began.

"Umm…" Yuigahama said tentatively. "Bakugo? I… kinda don't have my helmet? I mean, I suppose that's fine, I'd could put someone's shirt over my face or something which I suppose is fine, it'd just look silly, but… if my clothes get damaged after too many explosions… I kinda don't want to wind up naked in front of, like, half of Japan." Her face as she finished was bright red. Visions of white lace filled my head for a second before I desperately turned away to avoid meeting anybody's eyes and started considering baseball. Come to think of it, has UA ever sent a team to Koshien? "Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to be on a team with you if you think you need me, but, um, maybe not in front?"

The loudspeakers crackled to life. "Five minutes have passed!" Midnight's voice echoed. "Only ten minutes remaining!"

Bakugo rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Dammit, we don't have time for this shit. Spiky Hair, you're fine with it, right?"

Kirishima thumped his chest with his arm in response, letting out a dull clunk that almost sounded like wood knocking against wood. "It's Kirishima, man, Kirishima! And yeah, my quirk was made for stuff like this! I'm a horse that'll never falter!"

Bakugo grinned. "So you're defense, I'm offense. I want some mobility." He looked around for a second, then settled on Ashido Mina. "Raccoon Eyes, you can make slippery crap that won't burn if I blow shit up near it, right?"

"Yep!" Ashido said, holding up her fingers in a confident v-for-victory sign. "Leave it to me! And it's Ashido!"

"And… there's people who can fly out there," he finished. "I need someone who can catch me after I fuck them up. Froggy, you're in." Tsuyu looked off to the side, not acknowledging him, and Bakugo set off explosions in his hand. "Dammit Froggy, pay the fuck attention! We don't have time for this shit!"

"My name is Tsuyu, kero!" Unintimidated by Bakugo's volume, she just stared him straight in the eyes, until he finally broke.

"Who gives a shit!" He shouted back. I winced.

Tsuyu just maintained her even stare. "I do."

Bakugo sighed. "Whatever, fine! Tsuyu," he said with exaggerated emphasis, "you're in."

Although her quirk meant that she didn't have the most expressive of faces, Tsuyu's thin-lipped smile had a definite aura of smugness about it. "Okay, kero."

Bakugo glared at those of us who hadn't chosen teams yet, as if daring us to try to poach one of his choices. When nobody spoke for a second, I turned to Todoroki. "Your turn," I indicated to him with a nod.

"I need teammates who won't be impaired by my ice. Yukich-Yukino." After a brief stammer over her name, he indicated Yukinoshita with an impassive nod, and Yukinoshita nodded back with a similar near lack of expression.

"Wait, did he nearly call her Yuki-chan?" I heard Ashido's gossipy whisper say.

"I think they're cousins," someone responded, though I couldn't tell who.

Ashido's voice, more distinctive, replied "you know, I've read some manga where that wouldn't be an issue," and then Todoroki raised his voice abruptly to cut off the discussion.

"Yaoyorozu-san, can you make something that can insulate yourself and the other horse from our cold?" He asked.

My vice-president smiled affirmatively. "It's actually fairly easy for me to create vacuum-filled insulators that would be difficult to create using ordinary manufacturing processes. Oh! And if we wanted to make it hydrophobic even at low temperatures, I could cover it with perfluorooctyl-triethoxysilane modified nanoparticles on a polyester mesh with a perfluorodecyltrichlorosilane CVD treatment!"

For a second everyone was stunned into silence. "Uh… Yaoyorozu-san? Does that, uh, perfluoro-pterodactyl stuff protect against electricity too?" Kaminari asked hopefully. "Take me, Todoroki, me and Yaoyorozu cleaned up together at the USJ! Right, vice-pres?" He looked at her with hopeful eyes that almost reminded me of Komachi trying to get mom to buy ice-cream on the way home from the pool. It was tempting to just ascribe his pleading to him wanting to be on a team where he could use his quirk, but given all of the times I had caught him looking at Yaoyorozu in her hero costume and the way he was shamelessly bootlicking her, I couldn't help but wonder if he also had ulterior motives.

For her part, Yaoyorozu frowned, holding her chin with her hand in concentration. "Alkyl silanes are electrophilic, so I'd have to skip the waterproofing or you would probably set us all on fire, but an ordinary vacuum blanket should be an electrical insulator as well as a thermal one." After a second, I smirked as I noticed that she never actually answered his second question.

"Fine," Todoroki said. "Yukinoshita, Yaoyorozu, and Kaminari. Any objections?"

For a second, I almost thought that Hayama was going to speak up and say something, but he didn't. "Alright, Hayama, you're up next," I said, looking around at the rapidly shrinking pool of classmates and wondering who I would be left with.

As Hayama also considered his available options, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked over to see one of Shoji's tentacles, which then contorted itself to point at a quickly approaching purple-haired figure. It then melted like wax to reform into a mouth. "How do you want to handle it, Hikigaya?"

Briefly, I entertained the notion of tapping into Backdraft's quirk and squirting the mind controller in the face with a water hose any time he tried to talk to any of the 1-A students, but instead I just held up a hand and said, "Everyone, don't say anything for a second."

As silence fell, I turned away from the group to face towards the general education student, and saw the rest of the class all turning as well to see what the issue was. As they all turned and spotted him, out of the corner of my eye I saw hard expressions appearing on peoples' faces, wary frowns and hostile glares. As he saw them, the purple haired guy stopped short of our class with his hands in his pockets, and put on an obviously false smile. "Hey there, I'm Shinso Hitoshi from 1-C. Anybody want to be on my team?" Shockingly, nobody answered - verbally, at least; I saw a few slow head shakes, and Bakugo flipped him off with one hand while setting off crackling explosions in the other. "Huh, I guess not," Shinso said with a casual-seeming shrug. However, I could see a little bit of discomfort and worry in his eyes as he realized that his Quirk was going to be nearly useless against half the field.

Shinso opened his mouth to say something, maybe planning to see if we would respond to insults or just to take advantage of the fact that we wouldn't respond so he could get in our heads, but before he could actually speak the loudspeakers crackled to life. "Five minutes left, everyone! Just five minutes!"

He must have realized that he didn't have time for games, because his mouth closed with a clack and he turned to try and finalize his team, one hand leaving his pocket to wave a mocking goodbye. I released a breath I hadn't realized that I'd been holding, and turned back to Hayama. "Sorry, you were saying?"

"Miura, Tobe, and Jiro," he answered promptly, "I'm going to be flying for most of the match, so I want people with attack power." So, just like Midoriya, you picked your friends. Wait a minute, are you serious?

"Then I'll take Yuigahama, Shoji, and Hagakure," I said quickly before any of the other team captains could notice their mistakes or change their minds. "We've all got a little less than five minutes left, so let's all split up and discuss strategies separately. Just remember, the other classes are priority targets; no attacking other 1-A teams unless that's the only way to get out of fifth place, and if you see a chance to interfere with another team targeting one of us, take it. Everyone agreed?" I specifically locked eyes with Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, and Hayama in turn, and received a nervous nod, an exasperated nod, an impassive nod, and a confident nod in reply. "Then, good luck everybody," I said, internally rolling my eyes at the sheer corniness of what I was about to say, "may the best teams win."

As I walked away with my new team in tow, I let a smirk creep onto my face. Idiots! They were all idiots! I did my best to keep myself under control, biting my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. Unfortunately, it seemed that as usual, I had a face that was easily misunderstood. "Hikki…" Yuigahama said, a guilty look on her face. "You didn't have to just accept the leftovers just because you came in fifth, or to spare our feelings."

I couldn't help it. I snorted. "Leftovers?" I said derisively, and turned to face her directly, putting my hand on her shoulder. "Yuigahama. You were my first choice." Her eyes opened wide, and she clutched one hand to her chest even as I let my gleeful smile grow. "And if they had a single brain cell in between the four of them, they would have picked you first too." I let her go, shoving my hands back into my pockets as I shook my head and snickered. "Not a single one of them even considered someone other than themselves being the rider, which is how they all missed the fact that the headbands are made of cloth."

"Eh? You want me to be the rider?" Yui said, and I nodded and turned towards Shoji and Tohru.

Belatedly, I realized that both of them were looking down as well, and that I should probably reassure them both that they weren't leftovers either. "The same goes for you two. Hagakure, your invisibility makes you a great headband grabber." She put both sleeves to her face in a gesture of what was probably surprise, or maybe embarrassment. "And Shoji, you're big and strong enough that you could probably hold a rider up by yourself, meaning any team you're on can have two riders."

One of Shoji's tentacles formed a mouth. "I see. Then you, Hikigaya -"

"Yeah, I'll be a horse." Yup, that's me. I'll just run around, hold other people up, and save all of my Stockpiled quirks for the third round. Such a noble sacrifice I'm making. "Shoji, will it be easier for you if I take the front or the back?"

"The front, I think," he said after a second. "I'll have to run a little bit bent over to keep someone on my back, so my center of gravity will be forward."

"Then, you'll be carrying Yuigahama, while I carry Hagakure, to maximize everyone's visibility." I turned to Tohru, whose hands had moved away from her face. Without her making any abnormal poses or saying anything, her emotions were hard to read. "Hagakure-san?" I asked. "Are you okay with being a rider? If not, we can work something else out…"

"Ah! Yes, of course!" She shouted, and jumped in exaggerated excitement, one hand shooting up into the air as if to pump a fist. "I'm super stoked! I'll be on top where everybody can see me!" I'm sorry, Hagakure-san. No one will see you. "Ne, ne, Yui-chan. You have a cloth quirk, right? Do you want my shirt?" Wait, what?

"Oh! Yeah, having more material would be super helpful!" Yui said, shaking her own sleeves out to reveal the haphazard modifications she had made in order to use them as springs and other tools in the Obstacle Race. "I can do all sorts of stuff with this! Thanks, Tohru-chan!"

Oi, you're going to be standing on my hands and leaning up against the back of my head, you know! Are you really okay doing that without a shirt on? "Uh, Hagakure-san…" I can't say it. It's too embarrassing! "Um. Are you sure?"

"It's alright, Hikitaicho-kun!" She said, putting the ends of her sleeves to her hips proudly before reaching to the buttons of her shirt. Despite myself, I swallowed heavily. "It's like All Might said! Pro Heroes sometimes have to deal with issues like this! Even if everybody will see me…" her voice turned bashful for a second, before she resolutely unbuttoned her top button. "I have to put my modesty on the line if I want to be a pro!" No, your modesty isn't really the issue here! After a few more buttons popped, revealing the white undershirt under her uniform top, she started to wiggle and squirm. "Um… would you mind looking the other way? It's embarrassing…"

I whirled around on my heel with my face feeling hot, distracting myself by looking out at the other teams. It seemed like most of the other students had also formed four-person teams, though I did see a few three- and even two-person groups as well. Suddenly, my eyes met with someone who was doing the same thing as I was, a nimble-looking blonde boy who I quickly identified as the power copier from 1-B. I couldn't help but curl my lip in self-mockery. How many times as a kid had I wondered what it would be like to have a copy quirk that actually worked?

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"That's right, you high-and-mighty poser," I muttered to myself as I turned away from 1-A's president. "Just keep looking down on us and thinking you're special because you placed well in the race. We'll show you who the real heroes are soon enough."

"What makes you so sure they're looking down on us?" Tsuburaba asked, pulling one arm close to his chest to stretch out his shoulder in preparation for the next round. "We've literally barely even talked to any of them."

With a sneer, I threw out an incredulous arm in 1-A's direction. "Did you SEE the way they acted when the non-hero students came over to talk to them? The way 1-A just all stared at them together until they left? And the way that not a single one of them teamed up with anyone from another class? I'm telling you, we'll be doing them a favor when we puncture their egos by finally taking them down a peg."

Unfortunately, my superlative insights fell at least partially on deaf ears. "Oh, I'm sure they aren't all bad," Isshiki said dreamily. I followed her gaze to a tall blonde, who was hovering in mid-air while his teammates configured themselves to form the 'horse'. I didn't understand the way girls thought sometimes. What did he have that I didn't? Wasn't he just a little bit taller?

"Monoma-kun," a monotone voice spoke up suddenly, "if you get the chance, try to see if you can acquire one of Hayama Hayato's hairs. I recently purchased a Book of Shadows that in addition to other matters has a detailed description of binding an Anima to a Gris-Gris. I would be more than happy to lend it to you if you wanted to begin your sojourn into the mastery of hidden powers in order to obtain the attention of your would be paramour, Iroha-chan."

"Ah ha ha… thanks, Reiko-chan?" Isshiki said, doing her best to smile at Yanagi despite the creepiness of what had just been said. "I'm sure there are ways to do that that don't rely on voodoo, though…"

Yanagi nodded, a slight smile appearing on her impassive face. "Hmm. You're right. Now that you mention it, one of my tomes on Witchcraft could-"

"Forget coming back with one of his hairs," I cut in to forestall another occult rant from Yanagi, "I'll come back with his whole quirk."

"Doing so much for me?" Isshiki said with mock astonishment, putting one hand to her mouth. "Are you trying to get me to fall in love with you by playing the nice guy and then hoping to heal my broken heart after I get rejected? I'm sorry, but we've only just met! It's too sudden! I can't go out with someone I don't know very well! Please forgive me!" Her rejections came at me rapid fire as usual, giving me no time to react before she ended her speech with a conciliatory bow.

"That gets less funny every time you do it," I groused.

"You need a new excuse, Isshiki-chan," Tsuburaba said merrily. "We've been in the same HEART group for over a month now. You should just be honest with Monoma-kun and tell him that you're really only in the market for a guy who can 'fly' with you for longer than five minutes at a time." He waggled his eyebrows at her teasingly.

"Ugh," Isshiki said, her cheeks pinking even as her face screwed up in disgust. "Really, Tsuburaba?"

"And… TIME!" Midnight shouted. "The fifteen minutes is up! Riders, mount your horses, and collect your headbands!"

Despite their earlier bickering, Tsuburaba and Isshiki swiftly came together in formation with Yanagi, Tsuburaba taking point while the two girls brought up the rear. I tapped Isshiki on the palm to borrow her quirk, first lightly soaring up and then stepping down into the joined hands at the center of the 'horse'. "Ew. Did you have to take your socks and shoes off, Monoma?" Isshiki complained. "I can practically feel the foot-sweat already."

"I need skin contact for my quirk," I said sotto voce to avoid tipping off the other teams. We jogged over to where Power Loader was printing out custom headbands for each team. "If it really bothers you I'll get you some hand sanitizer later."

"Eh? Buying me gifts?" Isshiki said, and I braced myself for yet another fake rejection. Instead, she just smiled up at me devilishly. "I suppose I'll let you make it up to me."

I was distracted from my infuriating teammate by the fact that we were next in line for headbands. I decided to leave mine around my neck, where a bunch of other headbands would soon be joining it. Before I wore it, however, I let Yanagi reach up and touch it with her free hand, and shifted my quirk to mimic hers. A sudden wave of realignment swept through my body, as if every molecule in it had suddenly rotated on the spot, like the minute hand of a watch sweeping from twelve to two o'clock. Feeling Yanagi's quirk, I could almost understand why she was so focused on the supernatural. I felt a cold wave of shapeless, ephemeral force welling up from inside my torso, then flowing through my bloodstream down my arms until it wrapped itself around the headband. If someone did manage to steal it from us, Yanagi and I would be able to grab it right back. "Part one of the Flawless Combo, complete," I announced in a low voice.

"So, whose headband are we taking first?" Tsubaraba asked. From my position above him I could see his head shifting from left to right, evaluating potential targets. "Just let me know, and I'll try to get us a starting position near them."

"You have to ask?" I said rhetorically. "Let's show the crowd just who the real power copier is this year."

As everyone spread out, I spared a second from my focus on 1-A to take a look at the teams my own class had formed. Orimoto and Tokage had unsurprisingly teamed up with each other; I didn't recognize the tall boy from the business course or the redheaded support student, but given how much synergy Orimoto and Tokage had I honestly wasn't sure if the other two's quirks would even matter. The biggest threats to our team were Kendo and Tetsutetsu's teams; Kendo had joined up with Shiozaki, Awase, and Kuroiro to put together a team full of grapplers, while Tetsutetsu was sitting on the shoulders of Bondo, Honenuki, and Fukidashi, any of whom could potentially tie us down at medium range. The rest of the class had either found smaller teams, like Kodai and Shishida, or had decided to team up with non-hero students, like Kaibara and Shoda with the bluenette support student and the taller purple-haired general education boy, or… "Hey Isshiki. Look to your right."

"Oh no!" Isshiki said with genuine distress in her voice. "Did Ebina and Tsunotori get stuck with the sexual harasser? I should have warned them!"

Tsuburaba snickered. "I'm gonna be honest, Isshiki-chan, I don't really know who to feel bad for in that situation."

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"Pony-chan, we're going after Tetsutetsu's team first! Mineta-kun, you'll use your hair to restrain them, and then! Tetsutetsu's rock hard firmness… Honenuki's yielding softness… Ufufu, ufufu! Their passions will grow like mushrooms after the rain!" I was torn. On the one hand, the words coming out of the mouth of the woman sitting behind me sent shivers up my spine. On the other hand, I was sitting on the back of a gorgeous blonde, with the two soft cushions of a second girl pressing right up against the back of my head.

Well, it was too late to change teams now anyway. "Alright, but first we're going after them!" I shouted while pointing at the jerk president of 1-A's team and the pair of sport uniform pants seemingly standing unsupported on his hands. "Do you see that? She's topless! Topless! One little 'accident'!" My fingers convulsed in mid-air, as if reaching out to grab something. "One little accident, and-!"

"Sorry," Tsunutori interrupted in her thick American accent. "I think I no understand. Which way we go?"

"That way!" Ebina and I shouted, pointing in different directions.

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"Well, I doubt they'll be much of a threat, either way," I declared. "Tsuburaba, head over there, a little further away from Kendo's group."

Finally, we reached a decent starting 'spot'. The five teams from 1-A, along with Tetsutetsu and Orimoto's teams, had congregated towards one side of the athletic field. There were three teams on either side of the luckless kid with the million-point headband, all six of them clearly intending on dogpiling him at the first available opportunity. The other side of the field belonged to teams like mine, the jackals and vultures, all waiting for the moment that the prey was distracted so that we could charge in and tear away our individual lumps of flesh.

"Are you READY?!" Present Mic's voice squealed from the auditorium speakers. The crowd roared in approval. The stadium displays switched to a graphic of a countdown. I felt my heart racing, and my lips twisted up into a confident smile.

"Wait for them to get tangled up with each other," I said in a low, urgent voice. "Then? We go!"

"Three!" To my left, the three kids from the Tennis Club looked around nervously. The girl acting as the horse conjured a pair of blue oval discs to her sides, preparing a defense against sudden attack.

"Let's do this thing!" Tsuburaba said.

"Two!" To my right, I heard a deep rumbling growl as Shishida's body expanded, fur growing over his extended arms and bare feet as his all-fours posture grew more natural, Kodai clinging to his mane to hold on.

"We shall teach our enemies the true meaning of terror and despair," Yanagi intoned.

"One!" Straight ahead, 1-A's president had apparently chosen to be a horse. Damn. I'd been hoping to show him up personally. Well, even if he already knew his place as a side character in the grand scheme of things, I had no issues with reinforcing that lesson.

"Remember Monoma-kun, we're on live T.V., so don't screw up!" Isshiki ever-so-helpfully added.

My eyes narrowed, my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, and then finally, Midnight's whip cracked down and she shouted, "Start!"

And that's when it all started to go wrong.

As everyone was bursting into motion, as my own 'horse' started running to the side to stay out of the melee, as Tetsutetsu and Kendo's teams started racing forwards… not a single team from Class 1-A went for the ten million point headband. On the left side of the field, a massive wave of ice headed for Team Tokage, forcing two of their members to discorporate their bodies and the other two to make a massive jetpack-assisted leap out of danger. On the right, I saw Tetsutetsu's team having to rapidly back up as Bondo's initial spray of glue was thrown back in their face by a massive explosion. Ebina's team was fleeing in panic from its own sticky hairballs being somehow reflected back at it, and my own intended targets were squaring off against Kendo's team, pitting fabric whips against oversized hands to good success. And Midoriya, the first place target who everyone should have been aiming to beat, was under such little pressure that his team could glide around the battlefield looking for targets the same way that mine was.

The target team! The bait! The shiny dangly piece of string that all of the meat-headed, fame-obsessed morons from 1-A should have been chasing after with all their might, had the leisure to use MY strategy! "Those… those rat bastards! They're cheating!" I shouted, gritting my teeth.

"Whoa, Eraserhead! What's going on!?" The intercom crackled to life, Present Mic's voice full of simulated shock. "It looks like Class 1-A is working together?!"

"It might be the result of the USJ incident," Eraserhead explained in his usual dull, dry, voice. "Ever since, they've been determined to prove that the villain attack only made them a stronger, better team, and it looks like this is the result."

"That's pretty amazing, Eraserhead, but is that even allowed?" Mic asked. Yeah, that was what I wanted to know!

Even from my position across the field from her, I could see Midnight making the O-K symbol. "I didn't say it was against the rules, and it's interesting, so I'll allow it!"

She'll allow it. Yeah, that was totally fair, huh? The teachers weren't biased against the class with the #2 pro's kid at all, were they? I'm sure it was just a coincidence that their homeroom teacher was an announcer, and ours was nowhere to be seen, right? Well, no matter how biased they were, I wasn't just going to lie down and take it! "This means war," I said to myself, suddenly finding a laugh bubbling up from my stomach, feeling my lips stretch into a grimace of a smile. "This. Means. WAR! Everyone! Change of plans! Forget waiting for them to be distracted! 1-B isn't going down without a fight! Our counterattack starts now!" Across the field, I saw Kendo's headband be pulled from her head as if it were just floating away on its own, and pointed a finger straight at the culprit. "We'll sandwich Hikigaya's team between us and Kendo! Now go!"

As we barrelled down on the other team, I started evaluating my approach. Their rider was shielded from the back and sides by the enormous squid-like mantle of the rear horse, while the front was guarded by an invisible woman and by whatever Hikigaya could conjure up without his hands free. The gaps in the formation were covered by the rider's cloth whip… but she couldn't whip too far forward, or she'd risk hitting her invisible companion. And I didn't have to go for the headband itself to start - as long as I touched the rider's skin, I could neutralize her control over her own cloth and render her defenseless. "What's the approach, Monoma?" Tsuburaba asked.

"From the front at a bit of an angle, and give me some cover!" I temporarily abandoned Yanagi's quirk, reaching instead for a combination of strength and durability from Isshiki's. Faintly, I hoped that our charge would come as something of a surprise, but between the fact that we were charging from the front, and the fact that their rear horse's squid mantle was apparently covered in eyeballs, I wasn't shocked in the slightest when their rider reacted to our approach by attempting to steal my headband with a heavy fabric whip. I defended with an aikido block, redirecting the force of the blow off to the side. But while I'd expected the blow, I hadn't expected it to be so heavy. Due to their horse's taller stature, she had the height advantage, and despite my muscles being supplemented by Isshiki's quirk the rider's cloth quirk seemed to give her the strength advantage as well. Yanagi and Tsuburaba staggered from the force the hit sent through my body, and I had to hastily adjust my borrowed quirk to manifest flight in order to keep us all from falling over. "Tsuburaba! Now!"

Just in time, Tsuburaba's exhalations solidified invisibly in the air between us, causing the whip's second attack to waste all its momentum in shattering the barrier. Knowing that Tsuburaba would need a second to catch his breath, I took a deep breath myself, exhaling an identical barrier to replace it. For a second, our two teams stood facing each other, both trying to evaluate our next moves. "Hey, you guys are breathing pretty hard there!" The air above 1-A's president said mockingly, "That must make you guys Team Blowhard, right?"

"Blowhard?" I said incredulously. "Blowhard?! You, who are going around making speeches like you're someone important just because you got attacked by villains; you, who are having to resort to cheap tricks to move forward in the tournament, are calling ME a Blowhard?!" My hands balled up into fists, and I prepared to attack them from the only way they wouldn't see coming - from above. I realigned myself to Isshiki's quirk and prepared to show them just who the fakes were, but before I could take off something wet, heavy, and sticky hit me in the side of the head, yanking away my headband along with what felt like a few hairs from my scalp.

"You should pay attention, Copycat!" I heard a jeering voice coming from off to my left. I turned to see the spiky-haired blonde that made all the explosions during the Obstacle race, his team jogging past me while the froglike girl holding up the back of his horse took my headband from her tongue and handed it to him. "Just because Hikigaya has a better copy quirk than you doesn't mean you can ignore everybody else!"

A cool wind blew through my hair where my headband should be, doing absolutely nothing to calm the simmering cauldron of rage inside my skull. "Oh, yeah, his quirk's totally better than mine. His quirk must be able to do this, too, right?! Yanagi!" I shouted, and I pointed my two fingers at my headband, yanking on it with enough force to lift a human body into the air. After a second, Yanagi's fingers joined mine, and reluctantly Bakugo had to let go of my headband before he was pulled off his perch and onto the ground.

Just as I released my telekinetic grasp and was about to tie the headband back onto my forehead, however, I heard Hikigaya shout. "Get over here!" Abruptly, the scrap of fabric yanked itself out of my hands and back towards Hikigaya's group, where their rider used her makeshift shirt-whip to snatch it out of the air.

Furiously, I tried to reclaim it with telekinesis once again, only to discover to my shock and horror that the fabric was firmly adhered by an even stronger force to the cloth-user's neck. "Thanks Bakubaku!" She shouted cheerfully.

Looking disgruntled, Bakugo let out a sigh. "Yup. He can. Which you'd know if you weren't a moron. Quit stealing my kills, Hikigaya!"

"Quit stealing ours, first!" Hikigaya shouted back.

I just stood there dumbfounded. How had it all gone so wrong? "Damn it. Damn it!" I shouted, before setting my sights towards Bakugo's team. "Fine, if we can't get our own headband back, we'll just have to grab someone else's! After them!" After a few abortive steps in Bakugo's direction, however, we were stopped in our tracks by a sizzling wave of acid that melted the ground between us. Well, if my horse couldn't chase after them, then I'd just have to go it alone! Attuning to Isshiki's quirk, I jumped into the air after Bakugo, hoping for the element of surprise to allow me to grab a headband.

I didn't even get halfway there before I had to trade most of my flight for durability. My view of Bakugo vanished in a wave of fire and smoke, and only a panicked last second flailing of Isshiki's quirk kept me hovering above a pit of acid instead of falling in. Despite the ringing in my ears, as I stared up at the clear blue sky, I could faintly hear Bakugo's contemptuous voice. "Don't you get it yet? Hikigaya researched all your quirks, dumbass! And if you hadn't been a lazy fuck, you'd have done it too!"

For a second, I just floated there with the wind knocked out of me, staring blankly into the sky in disbelief. Then an athletic silhouette passed through my field of view as it soared through the sky, and I gritted my teeth and recovered my resolve. Fine! If I couldn't get the drop on Bakugo, I'd just have to go after someone else! The fact that Class A had taken the time to research our quirks was a shock, of course, but it only made sense that if they'd been preparing to cheat during the Sports Festival that they'd have more than one dirty trick up their sleeves. Well, no amount of dirty tricks would hold back a real hero. I felt the wind whistling past my ears as I soared up into the sky, my gaze trailing after Hayama Hayato.

He was making multiple high-speed charges through the vast cloud of fog that made up Orimoto Kaori's body. With each pass, the turbulence his body generated roiled in shockwaves through the mist, and it was clear that she wouldn't hold on for long. Even now I could see the fog thinning, revealing Tokage Setsuna's multipartite body within. I flew up into the cloud myself, shouting out to the girls. "Orimoto! Tokage! Class 1-A's teamed up! We should, too! Truce?"

In the mist, Tokage's head and torso reconnected for long enough to hook her lungs to her windpipe so she could speak. "I won't say no!" She shouted back cheerfully. "Tamanawa, Mei!" She called down to her teammates below. "Did you hear that? This blondie's on our side, now!"

Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, I flew forward in a tackle, pushing Tokage's head and torso out of the way just in time as Hayama came around for another pass. He clipped me in the side, the blow sending me spinning like a top through the air, but I grabbed Tokage and hugged her tightly to my chest to keep her from being thrown out to who knows where. With my field of vision, all I could rely on were my ears; unfortunately, any potential signs of danger approaching were completely drowned out by Present Mic's excited shrieks. "What a dominant display by Class 1-A! We're a little more than halfway through the battle, folks, and already there are just two headbands on the field not being worn by 1-A members! Not only that, but one after another, Todoroki is icing the other teams over, taking them out of the fight permanently!"

As I finally managed to stop my spin, I noticed that Tokage's headband was still wrapped around her head, one of the two Present Mic mentioned. I saw her notice that I had seen it, and for a second, our eyes met, a hint of fear creeping into her gaze. I admit, for a second I was tempted, but… no. I'd offered a truce, and since I wasn't a dirty cheater like those jerks in 1-A, I was going to keep my word. "You alright?" I asked Tokage, seeing her looking a little bit dizzy and disoriented from the spin.

She blinked a couple of times, then gave me a sarcastic smile. "Why Monoma, I didn't know you cared!" Then, her eyes went wide as she looked over my shoulder. "Dodge!" I dove for the ground at a sideways angle, making it out of the way just in time for several arrows of light to pass through the space I had just vacated. I looked over to see Hayama's team, where a curly-haired blonde girl was firing one plasma beam after another to try to knock us out of the sky. "You need to fly back closer to Tamanawa and Mei," Tokage shouted at me, "Orimoto can give us cover there!"

"Yeah, cover's totally going to be enough!" I shouted back sarcastically. "We don't need cover, we need more firepower!" Despite our difference of opinions, however, I flew back in her team's direction anyways, the business student's above-average height and the support student's pink hair making them easy to spot despite the concealment of Orimoto's thinning mist. As I did, my height above the battlefield made it easy to see just how dire of a situation Class 1-B was in. Kodai, Kendo, Tetsutetsu, and Ebina all had not only lost their headbands, but their teams had been immobilized with ice, preventing them from recovering their losses. My team and the team that Kaibara and Shoda had made with some non-hero students were still able to move for now, but had lost their headbands. Other than Tokage, who I was holding, the last team with a headband outside of Class A was the Tennis club, and even now 1-A's Todoroki was bearing down on them with waves of ice. I watched as Todoroki fired blast after blast at the Tennis Club, only to have the ice knocked out of the way by those reflective blue discs. "Tokage," I said urgently, "Bring your arms over, grab onto me."

"Huh? Why?" She asked. Despite her confusion, however, I saw a swarm of her body parts heading my way, and her floating hands grabbed onto the jacket of my sports uniform, while the rest hovered around me in a loose cloud. The two of us were cut off from reaching Orimoto's mists by another one of Hayama's cannonball-like charges, Tokage's hands pulling on me even as I flew to pull us both out of the way of danger. "Sure, we can keep dodging like this, but I can't go after other teams' headbands if I'm holding on to you!"

"Wait for it!" I cried. Together, we dodged another pass from Hayama, and then Tokage forestalled an attempt by Bakugo as he made a rocket-propelled jump up to attack us by knocking him off-course with her body parts and forcing his teammate to rescue him with her long, frog-like tongue. Bakugo hit those body parts with an explosion in retaliation, unfortunately, and despite the fact that she could regrow them Tokage still winced in pain and bit her lip to keep from crying out. "Orimoto!" I shouted, "If you can hear me, screen us off from as much of the right side of the field as you can!"

In the few breaths of space that Orimoto's cover bought us, finally, it happened. Todoroki lost his patience with the Tennis Club, and hit them with a huge wave of ice that even their leader's defensive quirk couldn't block completely. Just like I'd observed by watching him in the obstacle race from behind, his body stiffened as the accumulated cold slowed his movements. "The reason you need to hold onto me," I replied to Tokage with a vicious smile, "is because I can't keep flying if I'm going to be switching quirks!" In one smooth motion I dove down from our position above and behind his team and grabbed every single headband, along with the quirk that would give us our class' comeback, from around Todoroki Shoto's neck.

"Oh shit!" I heard Todoroki's blonde teammate say, and I flew backwards just in time to avoid a burst of crackling electricity. A few more of Tokage's body parts weren't as lucky, but despite the pain on her face, her hands never stopped pulling me away from danger.

I wrapped my right arm tightly around her torso. Without being told, Tokage took the few remaining body parts she had left and braced them under my feet. I took the headbands I was holding, and without bothering to check their point values I draped one of them around Tokage's neck before adding two to my own. With my hand finally empty, I was ready to unleash some serious revenge. "Let's see how you like being frozen!" I shouted, and I held my left hand out towards Todoroki's team as I aligned myself to my newest copied quirk.

My arm promptly caught fire.

In the stands, a blaze of fire erupted to match it. I spared just enough attention from the fight to notice that it was Endeavor before deciding that I did not give a good goddamn whether the #2 hero was pissed off at me copying his son's Quirk, and turned my attention back to the younger Todoroki. The shell-shocked look on his face just pissed me off even more. Seriously? Were you so incredibly cocky that you thought you could get through the second stage of the tournament while holding back? Were you going to show off your fire in the final round to impress everyone? Well, sorry, but I was going to ruin those plans! "Class 1-B!" I shouted, and I whipped my left hand around, forcing Bakugo and Hayama back with a wall of flame as they tried to chase me down. The crowd roared at the flashy display, and my triumphant grin spread ever wider as I focused my aim directly at the iced-over ground holding all of my classmates frozen in place. "It's time for our comeback! Let's show those jerks in 1-A what happens when they mess with us!"

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I groaned as the owner of the Mime quirk, floating in midair while seemingly holding a severed head, began laughing like a madman and setting fire to the arena. Damn it, we had been so close! If not for Todoroki getting overconfident and letting his guard down, we could have finished off the cavalry battle with a 1-A battle royale. I might not even have had to waste a single extra Stockpile! Instead, one after another the teams from 1-B were pulling themselves free from the weakening ice, going after headbands with a combination of righteous vengeance and panicked desperation.

"Wow! And in a spontaneous display of teamwork, Class 1-B is rallying!" Eraserhead shouted. "What once appeared to be a sure thing is now full on, class-on-class warfare!"

"That's the thing about complicated plans," Eraserhead's voice added, a note of humor in his usually disinterested voice. "When they work, they work well. But when they fail, they tend to fail spectacularly." Message received, sensei. Message received.

If there was any silver lining to the situation, it was that since Midoriya's headband was an instant pass to the third round, his team was a much more attractive target than my own. Unfortunately, there were still a few students who were willing to seek out what they thought was easier prey. I saw Hayama falling prey to a wave of green vines that snatched him out of the air, saw the mind-controller (carried by Kawasaki, damn it) running up to Bakugo and trying to bait him into speaking, and... "Mwa ha ha ha ha!" Joining Mime-guy in the maniacal laughter division was the brown-haired girl with the mushroom quirk, who came charging toward me together with her team. "With all the melted ice making things wet, my mushrooms will be unstoppable! Charge, Pony-chan!"

"I try! My legs still cold!" As the opposing team charged us for our headbands, I quickly realized that while my team was well set up for close range combat, there wasn't a lot we could do against ranged attacks. Purple balls of hair and telekinetically flung horns shot at us in a flurry, and all we could do to defend was to have Yui try to knock the attacks aside with blows of her increasingly tattered-looking shirt-whip.

"Eeek!" Tohru shrieked at what was presumably a near-miss, and she ducked down to take cover behind me, moving the unnamed pieces of her body that had been in contact with the back of my head for the past twelve minutes and counting down until they were pressed up against my back. "Somebody do something!"

"Shoji!" I called out, "Let's keep our distance! Where's clear?"

A single tentacle reached out to form a mouth near my ear, prompting a startled squeal from Mushroom Girl. "Five o'clock!" I nodded, and together we moved back, managing to keep our distance thanks to the somewhat shaky legs of the American blonde acting as their only horse.

Unfortunately, all of the haphazard attacks were just a smokescreen for the real danger. A horn with a purple hairball stuck to it appeared to be coming at us in a straight line just like all the others, only to swerve out of the way of Yuigahama's cloth whip at the last moment and to impact straight on my shoulder. Ordinarily that might not have been much of an issue, but all of a sudden the horn, my shoulder, and Tohru's previously-invisible arm were suddenly covered with rapidly growing mushrooms. "Ew ew ew get it off get it off get it off!" Tohru shrieked in disgust, trying to pull her hand away from my shoulder but being unable to do so due to the purple ball's glue.

"Shoji!" Yuigahama cried, seeing this happening. "Drop your arms!" I turned my head to stare at the fungal vector on my shoulder, trying to figure out how to deal with it, so out of the corner I was able to see Yuigahama standing up to her full height on Shoji's back. With her feet anchored in place by strips of fabric connected to the back of Shoji's shirt, and her range of motion no longer constrained by Shoji's protective mantle, she was able to put her whole body into a sidearm throw that launched her now hairball-and-mushroom covered cloth whip into a vicious arc that wrapped around Tsunutori's legs like a bola.

I could feel the rhizomes of the fungi beginning to prick into my skin through the fabric of my shirt, and I was guessing that it wasn't any more comfortable for Tohru. Unfortunately, the only solution I could think of on short notice wasn't going to be any more comfortable than the affliction. "Grit your teeth, Tohru," I said, sticking one end of Ooze into Stockpile and readying the other, while simultaneously passing her right foot to my left hand so that I could get my right hand free. "This is going to sting like a bitch." With a 30% stockpile, I covered her arm, my shoulder, and the sticky hairball with a dose of the slipperiest version of Ashido's Acid that I could manufacture. Even despite the inherent protection of Ashido's quirk and the protective layer of my shirt, I could feel my shoulder stinging as the acid soaked through. I felt my gut twist as I heard Tohru's cry of pain, only able to imagine how much worse it was on her unprotected skin. The slippery acid did its job though, as Tohru finally managed to pull her hand free of the purple hairball, and the mushrooms sizzled and fell off her arm in clumps. As soon as she was free, I swapped out Ashido's quirk for Yui's Cloth Manipulation so that I could tear away my acid-soaked, fungal-infected shirt before I took any more damage or she got stuck to it again.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, you weren't lying, Hikigaya," Tohru said shakily. I could tell from the way her weight was distributed on my back that she was holding her arm off to the side to keep any of the acid remaining on her from splashing me, and looking to my left I could see the glistening liquid outline of a slender arm.

I disengaged from Stockpile and switched over to Backdraft, and after a second of thought added the Soap quirk that I used to wash dishes in case there were any lingering spores left. "Hold still, I'm going to rinse you off," I said apologetically, matching words to actions as I began spraying soapy water from the center of my hand at both her arm and my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I'll live," she said, but I could hear the pain in her voice.

Before she could protest, or my embarrassment could get the better of me, I used the fact that I could see the water still clinging to her arm to reach out and grab her hand, then brought it to my mouth. Trying hard not to think about what I was doing, or the fact that Tohru's bare chest was now pressing against my naked back, I combined Stockpile with Recovery Girl and kissed her hand. "How about now?" There was an embarrassed silence. "Tohru?"

"Uh, yeah! Better! Ahahaha I'm fine now! Yep!" She stood up as straight as possible, no longer pressed against my back, and I felt my face turning even hotter than it already had been. Great. And I'd just gotten rid of those 'sexual harasser' rumors, too. Sure enough, the entangled trio who had been chasing us were now all staring at me with disturbing lights in their eyes, the women with stares of accusation, while the diminutive pervert's eyes were burning with undisguised jealousy. Even worse, now that the panic to remove my acid-soaked shirt was gone, I was acutely aware that I was completely shirtless and liberally splashed with soapy water, and I was on live television. I was never going to live this down.

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"Hikigaya-san," I pulled my face away from my monitor and swore internally. Before I was interrupted I had been just about to figure out exactly how those idiots in Sales had misfiled their claim documentation, and it was going to take me at least five minutes to retrieve my train of thought. "Hikigaya-san, you've got to see this!"

"What!" I growled in exasperation, looking up to see Tanaka's familiar head of blue hair and irrepressible smile as he held out a cell phone to me. I didn't take it immediately. "I-Island has a four week mandatory security screening on all support gear being showcased at the expo," I said, "which means that I have to find a way to fit eight weeks of documentation into the six weeks that we have left before Product ships everything overseas. I've got people three steps up the corporate ladder from me breathing down my neck for these reports, so this had better be important."

Tanaka put one hand behind his head in embarrassment. "Ah, sorry, sorry, Hikigaya-san, it's just - it's your son!"

As soon as he said that I practically snatched the cell phone from him with indecent haste. "Hachiman? What happened? Is he alright?" In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have panicked. Nothing about Tanaka's posture or tone of voice had indicated bad news in any way, and in theory Hachiman was at a school event rather than anywhere dangerous, but after two similar school events had ended with my son coming home bloody and traumatized, I was maybe a little bit oversensitive.

"No, no, sir, he's fine!" Tanaka swiftly reassured me. "Hell, he's better than fine! He's trending!" Bemused, I turned the screen to face me, only to see a clip of Hachiman giving a speech at a podium, that then suddenly cut to him shirtless, kissing what looked to be an invisible - I presumed girl, though you never knew - on the back of her hand. #PresidentialTreatment, it was helpfully labeled. I scrolled down. Another gif had the words, 'You thought it was a sporting event!' followed by a still frame of my son lifting a heavy-looking steel wall, the text 'When actually…', a slow-motion clip of Hachiman ripping his shirt off all at once, and finishing with 'it was a romance novel!" #HeroNameCasanova.

I couldn't help it. I let out a snort of a laugh before I recovered my composure. "Alright, Tanaka, you're forgiven. For interrupting me, that is. I'll forgive you for looking at hero news when you should have been working" he made some noises about having been on a cigarette break, which I cheerfully ignored, "as long as the competitive intel analysis of Detnerat is on my desk by five this afternoon, got it?"

Sagging slightly, he left my office, closing the door, at which point I gleefully pulled out my own phone. I had to send these to Matsuri immediately! As expected, however, my wife had beaten me to the punch, sending me a few of the more entertaining memes, followed by a totally unfounded accusation. "He gets that playboy instinct from you, you know."

"Excuse me?" I typed back, "I seem to recall only one of us was ever the campus belle, and it certainly wasn't me."

"What do you call someone who can get together with the campus belle, if not a playboy?" She asked rhetorically, then sent another picture that had me stifling my laughter to avoid being heard outside. It was a close up of Hachiman's face, looking almost bored as he brought the invisible girl's hands to his lips, but if you knew him as well as my wife and I did you could see the wide eyes and the poorly suppressed panic in the back of them. My phone buzzed again. "... He looks like he's having fun," it said.

There were paragraphs of unspoken sentences packed into that single three-dot ellipsis, and I stared at it for a long time before I could muster a reply. "... I know," I said. After another pause, I put the matter aside for the moment. I hadn't been exaggerating when I told Tanaka I was busy. "I don't have time to check the news right now," I said, "how's Hachiman doing?"

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"Ladies and gentlemeeeeen! With just two minutes remaining on the clock, the full on first year class warfare is still going at a frantic pace!" Present Mic's commentary was punctuated by the repeated booms of Bakugo's explosions as he went exploding-hand-to-giant-hand with Kendo's team, by the roar of flame and the hiss of melting ice as Monoma suppressed a visibly furious Todoroki, and by bestial roars mixing with roaring engines as Shishida chased Midoriya's team through Orimoto's fog. All of my focus, however, was reserved for the team of 1-B students whose leader's steely gaze was currently focused on Yuigahama. He wasn't a huge threat to us personally - no matter how hard his skin was, it wouldn't do anything to let him pry the headbands away from Yui - but the glue-headed boy in the back of his horse made me nervous. I'd already stripped out of my shirt, damn it, I didn't want to lose my pants too!

Suddenly, the ground underneath us started to liquefy and soften, as the skull-faced student in the front of their formation sent out a wave of quirkforce that gave it the consistency of quicksand. Shit, more Stockpiles I had to spend! Thinking quickly, I grabbed out to Uraraka's Zero Gravity quirk, dropping the weight of everybody I could reach as far as I could make it, and then channeled Triangle Flight to push us all up out of the mire and back onto solid ground. Every time I expended a stockpile, it was like I was seeing literal hours of sitting and meditating just going to waste, and the process caused me an almost physical pain. "Just a little longer, guys!" I shouted, "Let's just keep our distance! Shoji, keep telling us where!"

"Eight o' clock direction, but we need to put up some kind of barrier!" He shouted back. "Otherwise they'll just keep chasing!" Gritting my teeth, I reached out to one of the most difficult quirks to use I had available to me: Yaoyorozu's Creation. Frankly, I had no idea how in the hell she managed that beast. Even after a decent amount of practice, I couldn't create anything other than simple geometric forms. On the other hand, all you needed for a decent ball bearing was a perfect sphere, and I had a lot of exposed skin right now. Dozens of metallic orbs scattered forward from my bare chest, rolling all over the cement floor between me and the other team as Shoji and I backpedaled frantically.

"They're getting away!" The steel-skinned rider shouted. "Bondo! Glue them!" Finally, the quirk I had been dreading appeared. I took a deep breath, then blew out as hard as I could, creating a panel of air in between us and the gloppy spray that spread it out wide and kept it from anchoring us to the floor. It was an effective defense - but unfortunately, it was the kind of trick I could only do once. "Hit 'em again, Bondo!"

The second arc of glue lobbed through the air, and I prepared to dodge to the side in panic, only for the need to be eliminated by a massive wall of ice that cut us off from the enemy team. A huge wave of chilled air brushed past my shirtless torso, but nevertheless I let out a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks, Todo-" Funny thing. Before becoming a hero, I never had to worry about being electrocuted during my day-to-day life. Yet somehow, when the coppery taste of 10 yen coins filled my mouth, as every muscle in my body seized up, I instinctively realized just what had occurred. The sour tang of ionized air filled my nostrils as I desperately grasped for breath, and I forced my head up just in time to see Yukinoshita's guilt-stricken face only inches away from mine. "Sorry, Hikigaya." I heard Todoroki's voice saying from above me. Then, the soft whisp of fabric brushing against fabric as Todoroki took the headbands from a stunned and unresisting Yuigahama. "Your plan almost worked."

The creeping sensation of cold coming from the massive ice wall in front of me intensified as Todoroki iced over our team's lower legs. Somehow, I doubted that the blond guy with the Mime quirk would be flying over to melt us free like he had with his classmates. I was furious. You were sorry? The only reason my plan failed was because you fucked it up, and therefore that makes it okay for you to electrocute me? My whole body felt like it had been pummeled with a baseball bat, but as I slowly regained control over my arms and legs I held back on my instinctive first impulse to channel Regeneration. "One minute remaining!" Midnight's voice called out, and my eyes narrowed. If I healed myself now, I'd be incapacitated for a few seconds from the pain - and furthermore, Zaimokuza's Regeneration pulled from the same well of calories as Yaoyorozu's Creation. No, if I wanted any chance of recovering my headband I'd have to just power through.

"Tohru!" I shouted, "Get off my back, hang on to Shoji! Shoji, can you hold both the girls for a second?" His tentacle quivered and shook for a second, but when I looked over my shoulder to check on him his primary head gave me a firm nod. As Tohru's feet left my palms and her hands left my shoulders, I wasted no time in disengaging myself from Shoji and ducking as close to the sheet of ice imprisoning us as I could go. With my ankles locked, I couldn't lean forward, which meant that I wound up sitting down in front of Shoji and then flopping backwards in an ungainly fashion, so that I was looking up at his torso from below, my bare back resting on ice. Then, I used a stockpile of the quirk that I had been hoping to save for the one-on-one tournament matches. Hot Skin.

A huge sizzle of steam erupted from the ground beneath me, and I could immediately feel the ice around my ankles loosen. I used its anchoring to push myself back to my feet using only my legs and abs, a motion that would have been nearly impossible without Stockpile and my recent fitness regimen, then as soon as I was standing I used those same muscles to kick my legs free. I grabbed Shoji's hands once again, and braced myself as he, too, was able to take advantage of the loosened ice to free himself. "Everybody get ready!" I shouted.

"I'm sorry Hikki it's all my fault I lost the headbands but I couldn't focus my quirk and-" Yui's voice was cut off by the stadium loudspeakers.

"Thirty seconds!" Midnight's voice shouted.

As Tohru jumped back down from Shoji's shoulders to our crossed palms, I shook my head fiercely. "Not your fault! Now come on, we don't have much time!"

"Come on everybody! We can do it!" Tohru shouted.

Now was no longer the time to save up Stockpiles. Using the unspent half of Zero Gravity, I lessened the burden on Shoji's weakened legs, and together we started charging towards Todoroki, whose shocked face was a thing of glory. He was rimed with ice, our two teams were cut off from the field in our own little glacial arena, and I had under thirty seconds to try to take back our team's headbands and secure revenge. No pressure. Without breaking stride, I threw up, silvery ectoplasm falling in a torrent from my mouth. As it hit the ground, it formed into a plurality of angry Hikigaya Hachimans, all of them looking as shirtless and singed as I was. I had intended to have them fan out, maybe surround Todoroki's team, but I had never practiced with Ectoplasm's quirk before. Apparently, he could see through the eyes of every clone he made, and the sudden flood of information was so disorienting that it was all I could do to keep my clones moving in straight lines.

Nevertheless, apparently the sight was intimidating enough that it rattled Todoroki. "Denki!" He shouted, pulling an insulating blanket up to shield himself. Denki's blast of electrons knocked out my clones all at once, but the effort knocked Denki out as well… which meant that Todoroki's team couldn't run from us any longer.

He must have realized it, because Todoroki raised a hand to try to wall us off with ice. A gust of invisible pressure blew my hair back from my face as I spent my stockpile of Erasure, turning the glacial wall into little more than a burst of snow. "Get ready, Tohru!" I shouted as we got into within closing distance. "We're only going to have time for one shot!" There were just a handful of seconds left on the clock, but I felt confident that victory was possible. Tohru was deadly at close range, and Denki was out of commission. Todoroki's ice was suppressed by my gaze. We could do it!

Unfortunately, I realized that I had overlooked the crucial variable known as Yukinoshita Yukino right around the time that she kicked me in the gut. All of the mass and momentum behind the four of us charging toward her came to a sudden stop right at my midsection, folding me around her foot like a cheap towel. As I gasped for breath, Tohru stepped up onto my back, leaping up at Todoroki to make a last-second, desperate grab for our ticket to the finals.

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"Monoma! Quit setting things on fire, already! I'm getting sick of holding you up!" More accurately, I was running out of steam. Between explosion boy, electric boy, laser girl, and all of the other counter-counterattacks from Class 1-A, I had lost and regenerated the majority of my body over the last fifteen minutes. Suffice it to say that I. Was. Feeling it. Earlier, adrenaline had kept me going, but with only a few seconds left on the clock and the skies more or less uncontested, I was starting to fade. Also, I was concerned about Monoma. His face was bright red, he was dripping with sweat, and he was panting like a dog in the summer. "It's okay," I added a little more softly. "We won."

Slowly, he let the flames on his arm die. "Haah. Haah. Haah. We did, didn't we?" He said in quiet wonder. The honest smile that spread across his face almost made my heart skip a beat. Then, he collected himself, almost visibly pushing out his chest like a peacock ruffling its feathers, and I rolled my eyes internally. "Yes, we did! Haha! Well, it's a shame that Kendo wound up losing the headbands she got from Hayama to Bakugo after all, but still, two 1-B teams going on to the finals isn't bad at all, especially given their premeditated treachery and perfidious -"

"Monoma!" I cut in sharply. "You're heavy! Fly, already!"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "It's been longer than five minutes since I last touched Isshiki. I'm out."

"Use my quirk, nimwit!" I shouted. I could feel the burn in every detached piece of my body, lactic acid building up despite the fact that their flight should theoretically have nothing to do with muscles. "You don't even have to split! Just fly!"

"Oh!" Blessedly, the weight I was holding up suddenly vanished, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I let myself sag against Monoma, not caring what it might have looked like to anyone below. I wasn't snuggling with his sweaty ass, damn it! I was just letting him hold me up for a change!

"Ten!" Midnight shouted, and I slowly started gathering body parts, piecing myself back together one step at a time.

"Torso bone connected to the, belly bone," I hummed. Looking up at Monoma's amused expression, I flushed. "What?!"

"Nine!"

"Hey, blonde kid, thanks for the defrost earlier!" One of the general education students called from below. "What's your name, anyway?"

"It's Monoma Neit-" Weirdly, he cut himself off.

"Eight!"

"Hey, come over here!" My right arm finally connected itself to my right hand, which had been clinging to the back of Monoma's shirt to hold him up, and I pivoted as Monoma decided to humor his fan. It was a purple-haired boy, and his team was running toward us even as we flew down.

"Seven!"

"Monoma," I said, "You should keep your distance. He might try something."

"Six!"

I realized something was wrong about the time that Monoma kept going without even acknowledging my words. "Monoma. Monoma!" I shouted.

"Five!"

As we got down to the purple hair kid's level, only a few feet above the ground, I was more than close enough to see that kid smirk. "Great. Now hand me your headbands," he said. "Hers too."

"Four!"

I started to struggle as Monoma's left hand unceremoniously stripped my headbands from me. I tried pinching him, shouting again, but my hand was weak from exertion, and nothing I did seemed to register.

"Three!"

Finally, with a surge of effort, I managed to levitate my body just enough to change my position. With a cry of "Dammit, Monoma, wake the fuck up!" I sank my teeth into his neck.

"Two!"

"Ow!" Monoma shouted, and I prayed that I had been in time. "What the-"

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"And now, the winners of our first year cavalry battle! In first place, Team Midoriya, who held onto the ten million point headband through the entire event! In second place, Team Bakugo! In third place - what? Team Shinso? How did that happen? And finally, in fourth place, Team Todorokiiiiii!" I sighed as Present Mic's voice rang out over the intercom. Then I immediately clutched my gut at the pain that the movement brought me. To say that I was frustrated would be… well, maybe not an understatement; I felt like I had acquitted myself impressively enough in the final minute of the battle that it was possible Cyberpunch would cut me some slack. But it was accurate.

"Don't mind, Hikitaicho-kun," I heard Tohru's voice say, and an invisible hand rested itself gingerly on my bare shoulder. Despite myself, I turned to look at her. I didn't see her, of course, but behind her I could clearly see Yuigahama and Shoji. Both of them were singed, looking as glum as I felt, and had wild hairdos with every hair standing straight on end from static electricity. I reached a hand up to my own hair, discovered it to be in a similar state, and started patting it down self-consciously.

Ours was hardly the only team looking worse for wear. Hayama's face was covered in scrapes and scratches, Kirishima's shoes and pants looked like they had melted straight off of him, Totsuka was visibly shivering to try to warm up, the blonde kid who had been throwing fire around had a massive hickey on the side of his neck, and the short kid who had been throwing sticky hairballs at us was being treated by Recovery Girl for mushroom exposure. Even the teams who were in relatively better shape looked exhausted. "It's alright," I said eventually, doing my best to paste a smile on my face for my team's sake. "We came really, really close."

"I'm sorry, Hikki," Yuigahama said quietly. "I let you down."

"No, Yuigahama." Shoji spoke up. "If it was anyone's fault it was mine. I saw Todoroki's team coming, and didn't realize that they weren't acting as allies until it was too late."

"No way, Shoji-kun!" Tohru said, stamping her foot as a substitute for not being able to show her emphaticness with her facial expressions. Faintly, I saw a few drops of water seemingly hanging in thin air as they trailed down invisible cheeks. "You guys were counting on me to grab the headbands back at the last minute, and I missed!"

I wanted to put my hand out to comfort her in turn, but not knowing where exactly would be safe to put it I just wound up holding it out before abortively pulling it back. "And if I'd been a little more cautious, I could have used Kirishima's quirk or something as I was running up to keep Yukinoshita from slowing us down," I said, trying to forestall the blame game before it got too heavy. "We all did the best we could."

"Let's give a round of applause for everyone who participated!" Midnight shouted, and the crowd responded enthusiastically. It was a bit of a balm on my wounded pride. Even if we'd failed in the end, we sure as hell had put on a good show. "Now, don't feel too bad for those who didn't make it into the top four teams! They'll get a chance to show their stuff one last time over the break with some more traditional Sports Festival events as the finalists prepare for the tournament showdown at the end of the day!" Honestly, that didn't sound too bad. My bruised ribs and I could go for something low-stakes like a bread-eating race right about now. "And now, without further ado, let's reveal the bracket for the final -" She paused. The blue-haired kid with the palm strike quirk from 1-B had raised his hand, practically standing on tiptoes and waving it about in order to be seen. "- yes, Shoda-kun?"

"Sensei, I'd like to withdraw from the tournament!" He shouted. "I don't know what happened! All I remember is that one minute I was trying to find a team for the cavalry battle, and the next moment I was standing here! I mean, I do want to show my stuff off in the finals, but how can I call myself a Hero if I let myself take credit for someone else's work?" So, that was what integrity looked like. I thought back to all of the schemes I had concocted in preparation for this event, and despite the fact that, unlike him, I had avoided falling victim to Shinso's quirk, somehow I felt like I was the one who didn't measure up.

"Sensei, me too!" His other hero teammate said. Despite their defection and clear unhappiness at having been mind controlled, the purple-haired general education student who had used them seemed wholly unperturbed by their dismay. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Kawasaki Saki.

She was clearly torn, looking back and forth between Midnight and her teammates, and for a second I thought she was going to keep her mouth shut. Then, to my horror, I saw Kawasaki Saki look directly at me. Her shoulders firmed, and she turned back to Midnight with a resolute expression on her face. "Me too, sensei," she said in a clear, unwavering voice. "There are people here who deserve to be on that stage more than I do." No, you're wrong!

Midnight's gaze tracked from Kawasaki Saki, to me, and back before she broke into a leering smile. "Interesting! Interesting! How hot-blooded! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the passion of youth!" The crowd roared again, and I began to desperately wish that Tohru's invisibility quirk was one that I could copy, so that I could just disappear. "That means that there are three vacancies in the final lineup that need to be filled - unless anybody else wishes to withdraw, such as for medical reasons?" No-one did. "Normally, we would fill any empty spots with members of the fifth-place team! However, it just so happens that right now all of the headbands on the field have been collected by the top four teams! Which means that other than the top four, it's a nine-way tie!" She paused to let that sink in, still smiling like the show-woman she was. "Therefore, we'll be filling up those last three spots with one member each from the last three teams to lose a headband! Team Monoma! Team Tokage! And Team Yuigahama! Discuss it amongst yourselves, and figure out who among you will be going to the next round!"

Monoma's team was the first to make their decision. After no more than a quick huddle, they quickly stood aside to let their blond leader step forwards. "Team Monoma nominates Monoma Neito," he stated clearly.

Team Tokage seemed to be less unanimous. "You should go, Setsuna-chan," I heard Orimoto Kaori say urgently.

"No way," Tokage replied, "I am completely wrecked. No way in hell am I recovering in time for the finals."

The redheaded support student bounced up and down excitedly. "Ah! Pick me! Pick me! I still have so many adorable babies to show off!"

"I understand where you're coming from, Mei," the tall business student on their team said, "I want to be in the finals myself, but compared to Orimoto-san and Tokage-san, you and I didn't really help out much."

"It's gotta be you, Orimoto," Tokage said, and seeing Orimoto's tearful nod she turned and addressed Midnight. "Team Tokage nominates Orimoto Kaori."

And then it was our turn. "Yuigahama-" I tried to say, only to be completely cut off.

"No way, Hikki, you're going, and that's final!" Yuigahama said, shaking her head emphatically. "I let you give up your spot on top of the horse for me, and because of me, we lost! I'm not going to let you do that here, too!"

I turned to Tohru, only to hear a refusal. "Hikigaya-kun," she said, her voice unusually serious in her comparison to her typical bubbly personality, "I don't think I can beat Todoroki-san by myself. I don't think Shoji-kun can either." Behind her, Shoji shook his head solemnly in agreement. "You're the only one of us who stands a chance."

Revenge, huh? Briefly, Zaimokuza's smiling face crossed my mind, as did the monstrous beak of the Nomu at the USJ. I looked over at Todoroki, then over to Shinso Hitoshi, who had ruined Kawasaki Saki's chance to shine, and my hands balled into fists. I didn't deserve to move forward in the tournament. I certainly wasn't any kind of hero. But revenge… I could work with that. She must have seen it on my face, because Yuigahama Yui stepped forward. "Team Yuigahama nominates Hikigaya Hachiman," she declared.

"All right!" Midnight shouted. "In that case, these will be the brackets for the tournament! On the left side! Midoriya vs. Shinso! Uraraka vs. Yaoyorozu! Kaminari vs. Iida! Todoroki vs. Tsuyu! And on the right! Bakugo vs. Kirishima! Hikigaya vs. Monoma! Orimoto vs. Fumikage! And Yukinoshita vs. Ashido! Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for your top! Sixteen! Heroes!"

I almost didn't hear the roar of the crowd. I was staring at the display. Todoroki Shoto was all the way on the other side of the brackets from me. To even stand a chance of reaching him, I'd somehow have to make it all the way to the top. And you know?

I could work with that.


	17. Yoarashi Inasa Wants A Passionate Event

A/N: This interlude goes out to everyone who was arguing over whether Todoroki's 'betrayal' of Hikigaya was justified.

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You fall in love with someone, confess that love… and become a couple. Everyone would say that's a wonderful thing. But they're wrong! In the gap between a love confession and the acceptance of that confession exists a profound abyss of loneliness that the confessor must wait to be rescued from! In accepting a confession, you become a hero that saves another person from a pit of despair! In short, in order to be a hero in all things, one must never allow themselves to be the first to confess their feelings!

Shiketsu Academy!

It's a prestigious school with an ancient and honorable origin, originally a school dedicated to teaching the students of the wealthy and powerful but which slowly over time shifted its focus of education and became the number one school for heroes in Western Japan! Although the focus on nobility has been replaced with a focus on heroism, many talented children of the upper crust of society still attend Shiketsu, which still maintains many traditions of its earlier days. Discipline! Noblesse Oblige! A uniform hat that all students have to wear, even in their hero costumes! And most importantly, a powerful and active Student Council!

Naturally, only the most extraordinary of heroes could ever be trusted to lead and bring together a student body full of aspiring heroes and the future leaders of the nation!

"What the hell? That's not passionate at all!" A tall, brawny young man, his dark brown hair buzz-cut and his triangular eyes open wide in indignation, pounded the conference table in the Student Council room furiously.

Yoarashi Inasa! Quirk: Whirlwind! Simultaneously the winner of the first place result in the Shiketsu entrance exam and the entrance exam for recommended students at Shiketsu's rival school, U.A. high! Due to his exceptional performance and passionate personality, Yoarashi has been awarded the position of Shiketsu's Public Relations Manager.

A single slender, delicate hand lifted a remote and pressed a button, pausing the display of the live broadcast of U.A.'s sports festival. The light coming from the broadcast image, frozen as it portrayed a student with twin-toned hair leading their cavalry team to attack a former ally, illuminated a dainty-looking girl with almost porcelain-white skin and red eyes that matched with the red bow tying up her hair. "Yoarashi-kun," her cold soprano voice reprimanded, "as a member of the Student Council, you should display a certain level of decorum."

Shinomiya Kaguya, Vice President of the Shiketsu Student Council. Quirk: Bamboo. Total assets: 200 trillion yen. Her family owns the Shinomiya Group, one of the top four financial conglomerates in Japan, and is famous for its charitable donations to disaster recovery and hero-related organizations. Befitting her talented lineage, she has achieved an incredible mastery of her ability to promote bamboo growth from wooden or soil-like surfaces, and is capable of using spears of bamboo to attack and restrain enemies from afar. That is Shinomiya Kaguya.

"However," Shinomiya continued, "it's not as though I don't understand your frustration." From behind dark, full eyelashes, she aimed a glance full of hidden emotion at another occupant of the room - a blond boy, tall, with an angular gaze and dark shadows under his eyes. "Seeing someone with a distinguished background such as the son of Endeavor having to resort to an ambush against a group of ordinary students is … disappointing."

The object of her attention is Shirogane Miyuki, President of the Shiketsu Student Council. Despite the crushing workload of the Hero Classes, and the fact that he came from a completely ordinary family of limited means, Shirogane's single-minded effort and devotion to studying granted him a flawless result on every practice exam offered during his first year. Furthermore, his achievements in his Hero coursework were no less inspiring. Despite the fact that his Scale quirk, which can create and shoot reptilian scales from his skin, is considered only of average power he has honed his skill with his quirk to a point as razor-sharp as the scales he creates themselves. As a reward for his diligence, he was selected to be the Student Council President despite being only in his second year.

"I disagree," Shirogane said calmly, taking a sip of freshly poured tea. "Firstly, there are no rules of the competition that would preclude the actions that Todoroki-san just took. Describing those actions as an 'ambush' would take away the blame from where it truly belongs, the students who failed to anticipate his attack."

"Are you kiddin' me? Did you see the passion those guys were fighting with?" Yoarashi interjected, shooting an incredulous glare at Shirogane.

"Secondly, and more to the point," the Student Council President continued as though he hadn't heard Yoarashi's loud interruption, "as the heir to a heroic legacy, failing to move forward at this stage of the tournament would be something truly unforgivable to Todoroki." He looked to the side, his piercing blue eyes meeting Shinomiya's mysterious red ones. "Pure necessity dictated that Todoroki acted as he did!"

This may seem like the beginning a meaningless disagreement of no consequence to an outside observer. But, simmering just below the surface lay a truly heroic battlefield! You see, both Shirogane and Shinomiya were students of not only exceptional talent, but exceptional pride. During their first year in school with each other, they had both grown convinced that their counterpart was secretly in love with them. However! Due to their very exceptionality, both of them were full of resolve to become the Number One Hero! And, in both of their minds, the only behavior suitable for the Number One Hero that they could imagine was to deign to accept their admirer's feelings, rather than extend such an offer on their own! In short, the first one of them to admit their love would be mentally ceding the spot of Number One Hero to the other!

And so, over a year had passed with Shirogane and Shinomiya making exactly zero romantic progress with each other. Faced with such an impasse, both the Student Council President and his Vice-President had resolved that, rather than waiting for the other party to confess, that they would just make them confess. As such, even the most trivial of discussions and disagreements could swiftly become a battle of cat and mouse! Hero and Villain!

Oh? The President opposed that line of inquiry remarkably fast, Shinomiya thought. Is he perhaps jealous of my praise towards the student whose headbands were stolen? Hmm. If I push a little, perhaps I can get him to reveal his true feelings! "Shinomiya!" She imagined Shirogane saying, "The only one I want to hear you praising like that… is me!"

As such, Shinomiya Kaguya adopted a bashful expression, allowing a faint blush to come to her cheeks. "But, kaicho," she said shyly, "don't you find that in comparison to those who grew up in the lap of privilege, that someone who struggles and works their way up from nothing is more admirable? I mean, according to the broadcast, that Hikigaya's quirk is apparently a weak one, and they found a way to make it work for heroing work anyways. Isn't it a shame to watch someone like that be removed from the tournament?"

A powerful attack! Like Endeavor releasing a Prominence Burn, the words of praise combined with her bashful appearance were poised to ignite a flame of jealousy in Shirogane Miyuki's heart! However, Shinomiya had made just one fatal mistake. Her embarrassment, intended to be a tool of manipulation, was noticed and seized on by Shirogane as a sign of weakness!

It seems that Shinomiya is surprisingly guilty about the level of privilege she has, Shirogane thought, his eyes narrowing into a piercing stare. This is my chance! By continuing to praise Todoroki's actions, I can alleviate some of those negative emotions and cause her to rely on me! "Oh, Miyuki," he imagined her saying. "You always seem to know just what to say. I don't know what I'd do without you around."

"A true Hero is someone who needs to be able to rely on themselves," Shirogane said confidently. "They require a strong quirk, a well-rounded set of skills, and an exceptional degree of training. Just because Todoroki is from a family associated with the industry in no way invalidates the fact that he is currently superior to Hikigaya on all three of these points! In actual point of fact, I doubt that Hikigaya would have gotten as far as he had if not for Class 1-A's tactic of mutual cooperation, whereas Todoroki is displaying a strong individual strength. If anything, I feel that Todoroki is the one hewing closest to the original purpose of the competition!"

A Smash! Using the 'true purpose of the competition' as a shield, Shirogane was able to deflect Shinomiya's flames with a mighty blow, and furthermore send an attack with his indirect compliments to the powerful, well-rounded, well-trained student from an industry-associated family straight to Shinomiya's center of mass, which is to say her heart! Were she by herself, this might prove to be a devastating blow to Shinomiya! But when the going gets tough, a true hero knows better than to fight alone.

"Hmph. Rather than Hikigaya, it's Todoroki who's truly exploiting Class 1-A's teamwork to his advantage." Like Best Jeanist weaving together a wall of cloth out of nowhere, the words of a purple-haired male classmate defended against the mighty winds conjured by Shirogane's assault! But just who was it that came to Shinomiya's rescue?

Shishikura Seiji! Quirk: Meatball. The General Affairs Manager of the Student Council, Shishikura Seiji is normally an ardent defender of tradition, obligation, and dignity, and would ordinarily find a low-class ruffian such as Hikigaya completely beneath his notice. However! Shishikura has an uncontrollable crush on Shinomiya, and is incredibly jealous of any attention that she pays to the Student Council President! Therefore, in this rare situation where Kaguya and Miyuki are arguing, he will seize any opportunity to defend her position, no matter how illogical the argument!

"For the first nine minutes, Todoroki was perfectly content to avoid attacking his classmates and reaped the benefits of not being attacked by them," Shishikura said, doing his best to nit-pick and criticise. "Had the blonde flier… let me check my notes here. Monoma, yes. Had Monoma not copied his power, Todoroki's tactic of immobilizing his enemies meant that he would have been able to continue sticking to one-on-one engagements where his powerful quirk meant that he had superiority." It was a calm, professional tactic, the sort that Shishikura himself would have employed, and he couldn't help but let a note of admiration creep into his voice. Seeing the quizzical looks of everyone trying to follow his argument, however, he quickly coughed and recollected himself. "It's, uh, a coward's tactic. Only fighting when he knows he can win. Not hero material."

"Huh? But that sounds, like, totes smart, though? Why you hatin'?"

Utsushimi Camie, the Media Affairs Representative. Quirk: Glamour. Every year, a single student is elected to the student council by the student body, rather than being appointed by the faculty. Camie's bubbly personality and exceptional beauty made her the dominant favorite among all the male students of Shiketsu, sweeping her to victory despite the fact that her mental assets are by no means as impressive as her physical assets. Unfortunately for Shirogane, Camie's contributions to his argument are about as effective as a no-name hero like Manual coming to All Might's rescue! Despite the fact that Manual's water control could theoretically counter Endeavor's flames, in practice her aid in a logical argument is completely meaningless!

"Like, it's just a competition?" Camie said quizzically, pouting full lips and brushing a length of straight, light brown hair behind her ear. "And he didn't, like, break any rules? So isn't it fine?"

However, through desperate effort, when others are in danger, even the most ordinary of heroes can step up to the plate and provide truly extraordinary assistance!

"And, he's like, hella eye candy, OMG, for real, so I'm like, super happy I get to see more of him."

… Sometimes, anyway.

"The reason? The reason is that he lacks passion, Camie-senpai!" Yoarashi Inasa shouted, his youthful enthusiasm once again running away from him. "Look at his competitors! Every single one of them is out there giving their all and doing their very best to show their capabilities to the audience! But Todoroki…" He grit his teeth in frustration, and then pointed an accusatory finger at the screen. "Todoroki's quirk lets him use fire if he wants, but he spent the whole fight using ice! Even when someone copied his quirk and used fire, he didn't use it, so it's not because he was keeping the fact he could use fire secret! He's looking down on people, just like the way his old man did when I met him!"

Despite the power of All Might, even he would have trouble holding his own against three of the top pros at once! Yoarashi's additional opposition to Shirogane's argument was like adding Hawks to the duo of Best Jeanist and Endeavor opposing All Might! No matter how powerful a single hero is, no matter how well-reasoned a single argument may be, either can be dragged down by weight of numbers!

"Well, it seems that you're outnumbered, President," Shinomiya said, a sly smirk stealing across her face. "Besides, President, aren't you from an ordinary background yourself? I'd have thought that you'd be more supportive of someone struggling against students that have a head start."

Damn, Shirogane Miyuki thought to himself. I've been cornered. If I continue to push my interpretation of Todoroki's actions, Shinomiya will catch on. "Oh, were you perhaps so favorable toward Todoroki because he reminded you of me?" Miyuki imagined Kaguya saying. "How… cute." But, if I just give up right away without a fight just because I'm outnumbered, that comes with its own set of problems! Think… think… outnumbered, that's it! Right now it's three against one and a half, but if someone else joins in praising Hikigaya, it wouldn't be strange for me to bow to the will of the crowds, and if they join in on my side, I have an excuse to keep arguing.

Shirogane first looked to the corner of the room, where Ishigami Yuu, the club's treasurer, was sitting and typing at a laptop. As usual, the long feathers that served as Ishigami's hair were drooping down in front of his face, while a pair of heavy-duty headphones were wrapped around Ishigami's head, cutting off all outside noise. As if those two barriers from the outside world weren't enough, Ishigami had also wrapped the massive pair of wings that his Heteromorphic Swallow quirk gave him around himself, interposing them between himself and the rest of the Student Council.

Ishigami's not going to be of much help, Shirogane decided. In that case, I only have one option left! "Chika," Shirogane said to the pink-haired final occupant of the Student Council room, "What do you think?"

Student council secretary, Fujiwara Chika. Quirk: Blossom. The daughter of a powerful minister, Fujiwara Chika is a talented pianist, speaks five languages, and is exceptionally athletic, mixing hand-to-hand combat with her ability to conjure a telekinetically controlled swarm of flower blossoms from her skin to devastating effect in her hero classes. She is also… a natural airhead rivaled only by Utsushimi Camie in the student council! Normally, her allegiance to one side or another of an argument would be completely unpredictable, making her an unreliable ally, but Shirogane's cunning plan has thoroughly negated that potential weakness! All he needs for her to do is participate in the discussion!

"I think…" Fujiwara Chika said, bringing one finger up to her finger and tilting her head in a way that set the black bow mysteriously attached to her bangs to swaying, "that those two are a super cute couple!" She pointed her finger dramatically at the shirtless Hikigaya Hachiman and the equally shirtless Hagakure Tohru, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement. "Can you imagine? Fighting side by side on the battlefield, you get hurt, your boyfriend jumps in to protect you and patches up your wounds, and then he kisses you to take your mind off the pain? That's super romantic!"

"Whoa, Chika, that's a hot take!" Utsushimi Camie sat up, now equally excited and invested in the discussion. "I totally ship it!" For some reason, she dug out her phone and began tapping frantically at the screen, but none of her fellow Student Council members were in the condition to notice.

Non Sequitur. A French phrase, meaning 'it does not follow'. Fujiwara Chika's unintentional mastery of this conversational gambit allows her not just to derail the thread of a conversation, but also her fellow students' trains of thought!

"It's okay… President..." During a rainy night, on a battlefield inside Shirogane Miyuki's imagination, Shinomiya Kaguya lay wounded, her hero uniform attractively torn. "They're too strong… you should escape without me."

With a shing, both of the imaginary President's arms were covered in reptilian scales the same piercing blue color of his eyes. "Don't worry, Shinomiya!" He shouted bravely. "You just sit back and watch. I'll protect you to the bitter end!" A fierce battle against nondescript shadowy figures commenced, but all the while, the imaginary Shinomiya's eyes gradually began to overflow with gratitude… and adoration. Then, finally, she -

"No way!" Yoarashi Inasa shouted, interrupting Miyuki's daydreams just when they were getting good. "Here, give me the remote," he said, snatching it from a strangely unresisting Shinomiya Kaguya and rewinding roughly a minute or two, to where Monoma Neito and Tokage Setsuna were flying over the center of the battlefield. "I agree that patching up your girlfriend on the battlefield is passionate, but this! Clinging to each other tightly, teaming up on the battlefield and defeating all comers? That's the Ultimate Passion!"

Ultimate Passion… Ultimate Passion… the words reverberated in Shinomiya's head, evoking a scene not unlike the one that had just taken place in the mind of her love interest! A wall of bamboo rocketed out of the ground in the shadowy battlefield, effortlessly imprisoning the nondescript shadowy antagonists who had dared to oppose her! Meanwhile, with one arm wrapped around her shoulders, the President pulled her into the warmth of his broad chest while firing off scales or something, contributing to her fight in a not very specific but less useful than her sort of way. "You're amazing, Shinomiya," he said, his mouth curving into a smile. "We make a pretty good team, don't we?"

Out of habit, Shinomiya looked over towards the real President, hoping to use his angular features to make her fantasies even more realistic - only to notice that he was looking in her direction as well! Both Shinomiya and Shirogane blushed bright red, quickly avoiding further eye contact by turning to the paperwork in front of them. "E-Enough of this kind of discussion!" Kaguya shouted.

"Right!" Miyuki chimed in. "This meeting is supposed to be for us to be analyzing UA students' quirks, not their love lives!"

"I think we've seen enough of the cavalry battle, don't you Pres?" Shinomiya suggested. Internally, of course, her line of reasoning was more along the lines of knowing that she wouldn't be able to see most of the later half of the broadcast without blushing, but she very naturally covered her tracks with impeccable logic. "Some more straightforward one on one fights sound like they would help everyone else stay on track better."

"I agree, Shinomiya." Shirogane said, coughing into his fist. "Let's move on." Reluctantly, Yoarashi handed the remote over, and Shinomiya quickly was able to find the timestamp in question. "First match… Midoriya versus Shinso."

"Thank you, Shinomiya." Shirogane Miyuke stated, grasping his pen once more with a flourish and poising it over a blank sheet of notebook paper. "Everyone? Let's begin."

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108 Todays Result: Draw. 108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

"Hmm… what hashtag should I put this under? Oooh! I know, PresidentialTreatment!"


	18. Surprisingly, I Reveled in the Darkness

A/N: We now return to your regularly scheduled crossover.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

There is an ancient Chinese aphorism that states, "In this world, there is no medicine for regret." Of course, the original intention of this truism is to convey the obvious insight that 'using time travel to undo your past mistakes is impossible so get it right the first time, idiot,' but in my opinion it's true in a conventional sense as well. After losing at something most people have a natural inclination to seek out comfort, to console themselves for failure by sharing their misery and turning their friends into emotional sandbags, and to drown out their sorrows in distractions such as video games or self-indulgent power fantasy novels.

Naturally, I was an expert in the latter methods of treating the illness known as regret.

However, both the consolation of others and the distractions of media were effective treatments of regret in the same sense that cold medicine could be used to treat a cold; which is to say that once you were afflicted, no matter how many pills and home remedies you took you were still going to be feeling like crap for the next seven to ten days. The best that any medicine could do was to act as a distraction from your discomfort, and therefore the obvious best treatment strategy was to deny yourself of any and all such useless medicines in order to encourage your immune system to fight off similar illnesses faster in the future.

Therefore, my sudden desire to curl up into a ball of misery and lick my metaphorical wounds without talking to other human beings for at least a week was not only a healthy response to what had just transpired but in fact the healthiest of all possible responses. It was an impossible desire to fulfill, of course. I was stuck competing in the final event of the Sports Festival thanks to the misguided charity of Kawasaki Saki, and even had that not occurred there was no way that Komachi would leave me be. But all human beings desire things that they cannot have, and feel resentment when their hopes for such unreachable things are dashed against the bitter and unfeeling rocks of reality, regardless of whether those goals were reasonable in the first place. In short, my anger at being called out as soon as the bracket was announced was justified. Even if I had been in the mood to talk to people at that particular moment, I probably still wouldn't have wanted to talk to Todoroki Shoto.

"I need to talk to you," he demanded, "alone." All around us in the center of the athletic field, our classmates looked on, curious. His two-toned hair was still lightly rimed with frost that steamed in the warm spring sunlight, and as his mismatched eyes met mine I saw that they were full of an emotion that I couldn't define.

Not that I cared. "I'm shirtless, my shoulder is covered with acid burns, and I nearly wet myself on live television when you had Kaminari electrocute us," I said bluntly. I jerked one thumb over my shoulder to indicate the area where Recovery Girl was set up under a large tent at the side of the field, along with a few volunteers. "I'm going to the first aid station."

He nodded slowly, his face as impassive as ever despite my rejection. "There shouldn't be anyone in the entranceway to the stadium at the moment," he said, glancing over his shoulder in the passage's direction before returning his attention to me. "Come find me when you're done. I'll wait for you there." Before I could react he had turned away, already moving for the location in question.

Recovery Girl was efficient. Everyone who saw her got what they needed, whether that was a kiss, some gummies, a change of clothes, or all three. I was in and out of the first aid tent in under five minutes, leaving me plenty of time to go see Todoroki and still make it to lunch with enough time to eat.

As I left Recovery Girl's Recovery Tent, I saw that Yuigahama, Shoji, and Hagakure were standing in a loose cluster, dawdling around instead of leaving for the cafeteria. As I walked by I called out a friendly reminder. "You guys should hurry up if you want to be able to find somewhere to sit together for lunch."

"Don't you still have to talk to Todoroki, Hikigaya-san?" Shoji asked, his hand-mouth offering me a smile. "We'll wait for you."

"No need," I said with an ironic smirk. "I'm not going."

"Hikki!" Yuigahama yelped, scandalized.

Hagakure giggled. "You're bad, Hikigaya," she said in a tone of sly admiration.

One of Shoji's eyebrows lifted. "Really? What if he wants to apologize?"

I snorted. "If Todoroki wanted to apologize, he should have asked all four of us." Jamming my hands into my pockets, I started walking towards the cafeteria. "Also, I don't care."

"Hmm." Shoji made a noncommittal noise that sounded like it would have come from the back of his throat if he weren't speaking from his hand. I thought it sounded vaguely satisfied.

But while Hagakure and Shoji didn't seem too discomfited by my decision, the same couldn't be said of Yuigahama Yui. "Ne, Hikki… I can understand why you'd be mad at Todoshoto, I'm a little upset that he knocked us out of the tournament too… but at the same time I don't want to stay mad at him, or Denki-kun, or Yaomomo or Yukinon either. Isn't it better if everybody gets along?" She looked up at me with imploring dark brown eyes that peeked out from under orange bangs, and I could practically feel my resentment starting to crumble.

"I'll probably forgive him eventually," I said with an exasperated sigh, looking up at the clear blue sky in lieu of having to face her. "If I think about it rationally, there's not even really much to be mad about. I probably would have done the same thing in his shoes." No. If there was anybody that I should really be angry at it was myself. I was too caught up in my own schemes, too self-satisfied to notice or realize that when push came to shove people would stop playing along.

"Then -" Yuigahama started, but I cut her off.

"In the meantime," I continued, "I'm hungry, tired, and petty." As we neared the cafeteria and my nose began to pick up on the scent of food, my stomach growled as if to back up my point. "If Todoroki is hoping to apologize so that I'll absolve him of his sins it can wait until I'm not feeling dizzy from low blood sugar." It wasn't that severe of course. I had been feeling dizzy a moment ago, but the gummies that Recovery Girl gave me were already starting to kick in. I was just being childish. But a Sports Festival was fundamentally a celebration of youth in the first place, so what better time or place for a display of childishness? "Besides," I muttered, "he didn't even bother asking, he just told me to show up and assumed I would. It's not like I agreed."

Yuigahama's only response was a helpless sigh. Well, that was probably the correct response to someone who said they knew they were being petty and weren't going to change that.

UA's cafeteria was always a fairly noisy place. There are only so many ways you can cram two hundred people into a room with a large, open floorplan after all, and very few of them involve designing things so that all two hundred of the occupants can simultaneously have conversations at volumes below that of a full roar. With everyone hyped up on adrenaline from the previous competitions, the room was loud enough that I could feel a pulsing headache beginning to spread from my temples. I was simultaneously feeling nauseated and ravenously hungry, and the lie that I had told Yuigahama about feeling dizzy was, in an act of karmic backlash, starting to come true again.

Out of habit, I slapped my pockets to grab for a sports bar, only to realize that they were empty. "Shit." I muttered.

I hadn't expected anyone to hear me over the roar of the cafeteria, so either I had said it louder than I'd intended, it was obvious on my face, or Shoji Mezo's quirk was just that good. "What's wrong, Hikigaya-san?" One of his hand-mouths asked.

"I forgot we had to empty our pockets for the race," I mumbled. "I usually have some spare food on hand in case a quirk makes my blood sugar crash."

"You don't look so good, class prez," Hagakure said, her torso leaning forward so that I could see down the neck of the fresh shirt she had acquired from the recovery station. It was an interesting view, but unfortunately only in an academic sense. "Do you need to sit down? We can bring you something to eat."

I felt my face flush in embarrassment. I was hungry, damn it, not an invalid. "I'm not going to starve to death in the three minutes it takes to get through a lunch line," I said snappishly.

"Alright, if you're sure…" Hagakure said doubtfully. "Yui-chan, can you keep an eye on him? We'll meet you at the table."

"Mm, sure thing," Yuigahama replied, a tone of false cheerfulness in her voice. Confused, I was about to ask what was going on, only to watch as Hagakure and Shoji got into a separate lunch line from Yuigahama and I, one with individually prepared lunches rather than the typical big drop-ins of food that ordinary students were served ladlefuls from.

Right, I remembered that vaguely from my classes with Dr. Kobayakawa. A lot of heteromorph quirks gave the users unusual dietary requirements; UA was totally the type of place that would go Plus Ultra in making sure that students' needs were met. Huh. Maybe that was the sort of thing that I should look into?

"I'm sorry, Hikki," Yuigahama said quietly, interrupting my musings. "I shouldn't have been so pushy earlier. I didn't realize -"

"It's fine," I interrupted her, my voice coming out flatter and harsher than I'd intended. "Not like you could have known." I felt irrationally angry. Stop feeling guilty for thinking like a hero, already!

After what seemed like far too long, I finally made it to the lunch counter. Today's meal was teriyaki chicken stir-fry over rice, no doubt chosen because it was a light and flavorful entree that wouldn't sit heavily in students' stomachs and interfere with them being active later. I already knew it wasn't going to be enough for me. UA wasn't stingy on food by any measure, though, and there were more than enough supplemental snacks and other items for me to make up the difference. Milk, juice, an apple, an orange, a banana, some mixed nuts, a vegetable tray with hummus, I grabbed them all, piling them around the edges of my plate like a miniature diorama of Stonehenge.

Humans are creatures of habit. At the same time, they are also creatures of selfishness. Even though the most pleasant course of action for most people is simply to stick to the actions and locations that they are already familiar with, when opportunities for personal gain presented themselves most humans would leap for them without bothering to learn or care whose normal routines they were inconveniencing. In other words: thanks to our delay at the recovery tent, a bunch of extras from the general education classes had stolen my usual table, and I was irritated enough at the fact that I was referring to them with Bakugo's terminology.

Then Totsuka Saika waved a friendly hand to catch my attention, from a table nearby the usual spot. With him sat Yukinoshita, Yaoyorozu, and Bakugo. I suppose that's the thing about habits; even when we know better, even when following them would only bring heartache, sometimes we can't help but cling to them. For a second, I debated the merits of pretending that I hadn't seen them, but my stomach growled as if to remind me that I had better things to do than wandering around looking for a less socially awkward place to sit.

I regretted listening to my stomach's advice on the matter almost as soon as Yuigahama and I sat down. Laughter danced in Bakugo's red eyes as he greeted us. "Great job making it through on a technicality and getting kicked out, morons."

Thank you Bakugo, for your stunning level of tact and sensitivity. As I tore into a banana with indecent haste, my mouth was unfortunately too full to reply. It definitely wasn't because I had no comeback to that. Definitely not.

"Katsuki!" Totsuka scolded, his usually cheerful face taking on one of his rare hints of indignation. "Be nice!" Was it bad that it reminded me of a mother scolding their children? "Would you want him making fun of you if you were the one who got out?" Totsuka used Guilt-Trip! But, it wasn't very effective...

"Hah!" Bakugo said with a smirk. "Wouldn't have been me."

Yukinoshita stared at Bakugo the way that someone else might stare at a particularly noxious beetle. "Don't bother telling Bakugo to act nice, Saika-kun. I'm not sure that he actually knows how." Yukinoshita used Taunt! Predictably, Bakugo falls for it like an idiot!

Bakugo snorted dismissively. "Eat shit and die, Ice Queen." After a pause in which he noticed that everyone was staring at him in clear agreement with Yukinoshita, he rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. You want me to be nice?"

Despite myself, I picked up my head from shoveling food into my face as fast as I could go. This, I had to hear.

"You did your best to take a shot at the League of Villains," he said, jabbing his chopsticks at me rudely. "Yeah, you fucked up at the end. Doesn't change the fact that none of the rest of the fucking extras around here have the balls to even try."

Wow. I was impressed. If that had actually been my motivation, as opposed to a lie that I had cooked up to manipulate my class, I might actually have been cheered up by something Bakugo of all people had said.

He continued on to point at Yuigahama. "You should have stayed on my team when you had the chance. Half the losers in the tournament are scrubs, you'd probably have made the second round."

Yuigahama's face twitched as she pasted on a smile. "W-wow, Bakugo, that was… almost comforting," she said, accurately summarizing how I felt. "Actually, speaking of your team, where are they? I would have thought you'd be, um, like celebrating with them or something." Translation: go somewhere else if you can't figure out how to read a room, idiot!

"Huh?" Bakugo said, scowling at Yuigahama. "This is where I eat. If they wanted to sit with me, they would've."

I looked at Bakugo in disbelief. Yaoyorozu, on the other hand, looked intrigued. "Hmmm… that's odd. I would have expected them to invite you. Perhaps they made a nonverbal offer? Or would that fall under implied social contracts?" Oi, Yaoyorozu. Stop treating talking to people like it's an academic subject. I don't want to add a third subject to the list of classes I'm failing at.

"Tche. Whatever," Bakugo said. "What about your team, Airhead? They ditch you and Hikigaya for some reason?"

In yet another display of superior situational awareness, Shoji Mezo stepped into the conversation like he had been standing there all along. "Not at all," he said, sitting down in the empty space on Bakugo's right. "It's just that heteromorph-specific meals take a little longer for Lunch Rush to prepare."

"Hmmm…" Tohru hummed, looking at the crowded table. Although it was just Shoji, Totsuka, and Bakugo on the other side of the table from me, while the three girls at the table were on my side, due to Shoji's mass it would be hard for her to find a seat. After a moment, she made up her mind. "Mind scooting in a little bit, Class Prez? I can probably manage with just the corner of the bench."

I swallowed, forcing half-chewed apple down my throat to clear it. "Oh, uh, sure." I budged over carefully, but despite my best efforts I still found myself brushing shoulders with Yuigahama, who likewise was forced into close contact with Yukinoshita. Neither protested, though Yuigahama seemed a little bit embarrassed. Tohru then promptly sat down on the other end, carelessly leaning up against me as well. Then again, considering what we'd already done… I felt heat rushing to my face as I recalled just why Tohru might be unconcerned about a little bit of close contact, and hastily grabbed for the bottle of orange juice to hide my flusteredness.

Meanwhile, Totsuka's curiosity was piqued. "Eh? Heteromorph-specific meals? Ah, now that you mention it, I remember Ooka-kun saying something about being lucky that he didn't need those. What are they like?"

"It varies by the individual," Shoji explained. "My diet requires a lot of seaweed, fatty fish, and other foods high in collagen to enhance my shapeshifting." He gestured down at his plate, and the enormous sushi roll that he was feeding to a hand-mouth one bite at a time.

"And I need a lot of Vitamin D," Hagakure explained, pointing down at a mushroom-heavy omelet. "Apparently my body has trouble getting it from sunlight." She paused for a second, then I felt her shiver through her contact with my shoulder. "Uh… but I don't think eating something different for one day will hurt me any. Anybody want to trade?"

I stared down at the mushrooms as well, and then looked at my own meal - already half-eaten, but there were a few side items I hadn't touched yet. "You can have my veggie sticks and my orange," I offered. "I'm not sure I'm going to eat everything." It was a lie. I would be hungry later. On the other hand, I wasn't so hungry that I offered to trade her for her omelet. After seeing mushrooms growing out of my skin, there were limits.

Hagakure leaned across me slightly, squishing into the side of my arm as she took the offered items and moved them to her plate. "Thanks, Hachiman," she said earnestly.

Calm down, calm down. Deep breaths. Take a bite of food. Attune to Willpower. You're just being hyperconscious of her because she was just - because of the cavalry battle. She's a nice girl, being friendly, that's all. Pretend it's someone else calling you by name, like Totsuka. Why does that help less than it should?

"Hey Hikki!" Yuigahama said brightly, squishing into me from the other side. "You're on a special diet too, right?"

My brain went blank for a second. I coughed as a bite of rice went down the wrong tube, and quickly reached out and grabbed my carton of milk to wash it back down. Luckily, a lifetime of social awkwardness had prepared me for just such an event! Reacting to an innocuous but ambiguous action taken by a pretty girl as though it was something special would be embarrassing, so when in doubt? Pretend nothing out of the ordinary happened!

"Nothing special," I mumbled around the mouth of the carton before I took another sip. "I was on this... high protein athletic diet for a while?" I can't just say that I was on a 'bodybuilding' diet! It's too embarrassing! "But then I picked up a muscle building quirk and wound up needing a lot more calories," I hurriedly continued. "I still eat all the extra protein and stuff, but now I eat a lot of other stuff too, so I don't know if it even qualifies as a special diet anymore."

"A high-calorie diet certainly qualifies!" Yaoyorozu said, looking at me with sparkling, energetic eyes. "I'm on one myself due to the fact that my quirk requires lipids as a base material to create objects from." If this were an anime, Yaoyorozu's ponytail would have been wagging back and forth like a cat's tail to show her excitement at having found a 'high calorie food buddy'. "We should get together and compare recipes sometime! I know that I certainly find it inconvenient to just be constantly eating sweets and pastries…"

"Wow. That does sound inconvenient," Hagakure said in quite possibly the flattest, most lifeless voice I had ever heard come out of the mouth of a human being other than myself. There was an awkward silence as Yukinoshita gave Yaoyorozu the stink-eye out of the corner of her eye, and Yuigahama self-consciously squeezed a bit of flesh at her waist.

Luckily for Yaoyorozu's sake, despite the fact that he had a maiden's face, Totsuka Saika proved that he lacked a maiden's heart with a complete lack of jealousy and a rapid move to change the subject on her behalf. "That's pretty interesting! What about you, Katsuki-kun, Yui-chan, Yukino-chan; is there anything special that you guys eat to help your quirks?"

Bakugo looked around for a second suspiciously, then shrugged. "... Nothing special, really. Just lots of protein for muscle and a little extra calcium to make sure my bones don't crack from explosions." However as he said it, he picked up a bottle of extra-strong hot sauce from his tray and pivoted it so that we could read the label.

So you eat spicy stuff to make yourself sweat. Is that really something that needs to be kept a secret? Well, not everybody knows that it's actually his sweat that explodes… Sometimes I forget that most people can't just poke people to get all the details on other peoples' quirks.

"Nope, not really," Yui chimed in. Unlike Bakugo, she appeared to be honest as she said it. Surprising. Given her quirk I would have expected she'd eat a high fiber diet.

Surprisingly Yukinoshita looked slightly uncomfortable as we all turned to her. "I'm supposed to eat a lot of ice and other chilled foods to help stay cool when I use my quirk, but I don't like doing it," she said hesitantly. "My mouth is really sensitive to cold things."

I smirked. "Cat's tongue, huh?" Maybe it was the fact that the food in my belly was finally starting to digest, maybe it was out of a continued desire for petty revenge, but somehow the thought of teasing Yukinoshita Yukino made me feel unaccountably cheerful. "I know you like cats, Yukinoshita, but there are limits to that sort of thing."

"Better a cat's tongue than a viper's, Hikireptile-kun." Yukinoshita fired back.

"Oh boy," Yuigahama muttered, scooting back in her seat so as to clear Yukinoshita's line of fire. I'm sorry that you have to put up with a friend as shrewish as Yukinoshita, Yuigahama! Your noble sacrifices will not go unrecognized!

"I'll have you know that a snake's tongue is exceptionally sensitive to temperature and vibrations, Yukinoshita-san," I said fatuously, placing one mock-offended hand to my chest. "As such, any resemblances my own tongue has to that of a snake are purely survival strategies developed after being in your presence."

"I see," Yukinoshita said, nodding solemnly. "In that case, I humbly apologize to all animals of the Family Viperidae for associating them with you, Slug-tongue-aya-kun."

What was I, a Lord Of The Rings villain? "The 'Family Viperidae' might accept your apologies, Yukipedia-chan," I said, making air quotes to emphasize her needlessly scientific description, "but if mere apologies were enough to settle slander cases there would be no need for courts. I hereby demand a full retraction of your insults towards me, a formal apology, and ten million yen in compensation plus punitive damages."

"Um…" Hagakure whispered next to me. "Are they okay? Should we stop them?"

"I'm afraid, Hikigaya-san, that your lawsuit will be pointless." Yukinoshita smiled like a shark. "Slander only comes into play when accusations are detrimental to one's reputation, and I'm certain that any reasonable judge would determine that a comparison of you to any vertebrate could only be construed as a compliment."

"Eh heh heh.." Yuigahama laughed awkwardly, whispering back to Hagakure. "They do this all the time, it's fine." On the other side of Yukinoshita, I could see Momo closing her eyes with a pained expression and nodding in agreement.

Invertebrate, was I? Well, I suppose that Shrews were an animal that was the ultimate predator of insects. "Did you forget about the jury of your peers, Yukinoshita-san? I mean, they won't be able to hold the trial until January rolls around and they can find enough icicles to fill a jury box, but at least it'll give you plenty of time to prepare a defense."

"Are you sure?" Shoji asked dubiously. "This seems sort of harsh."

"How fortunate for you," Yukinoshita replied in a, heh, frosty voice. "Burnable trash is collected weekly."

As I was frantically wracking my brains for a comeback, Bakugo completely shattered my train of thought. "Nah, this is just how they flirt," he drawled.

"Eh?" Tohru shouted in unhappy surprise.

Suddenly, a balled-up paper napkin bounced off my face, and I blinked as my brain caught up to the completely ludicrous and false statement that my ears had just heard. "Get a room, nerds!" Bakugo shouted.

My face burning hot, I whipped my head around to face him. "I'm/We're not flirting!" I shouted, my voice overlapping with Yukinoshita's simultaneous denial.

"Bakugo-san." Yukinoshita said with forced calm. "Nothing that you are implying is going on in the slightest. In fact, the only person here I have less interest in flirting with than Hikigaya-san is you."

In response to that unflattering comparison to Bakugo I cleared my throat ostentatiously. "Yaoyorozu-san. Yuigahama-san. Hagakure-san. If Yukinoshita makes any inappropriate advances towards you, or makes you uncomfortable in any way, let me know. I'll believe you."

"Ha ha ha okay okay let's change the subject now shall we?" Yuigahama said, interposing herself back between Yukinoshita and I to break our line of sight to each other.

"Yes," Yaoyorozu chimed in, "I agree." Despite saying so, however, she was grinning in amusement at my weeks-belated comeback. "Now, let's see… Oh, I know! If it was a private topic, feel free not to answer in specific details, but did your conversation with Todoroki-san go well, Hikigaya?" She looked hopeful, as if waiting to be reassured that her own participation in the act of betraying me had been totally forgiven.

Comfortable. Familiar. My exchange of insults with Yukinoshita had been a way of apologizing without apologizing, accepting without accepting. An unspoken agreement to ignore our emotional problems and difficulties with each other until they went away so that we could continue in our normal, everyday patterns, conveniently distracting me from the fact that I had just left Todoroki Shoto twisting in the wind. I looked down at my plate. Somehow, it was already mostly empty, with all of the packaging and peels of the extra food staring back at me as though mocking me.

I stood up. "I should probably go talk to him, huh," I said. Now that I had some actual food in my belly, my decision to just ignore Todoroki and let him sit out there seemed far less vindictively satisfying, and far more meanspirited. The shame of it burned at the back of my neck, and I abruptly turned away from everyone at the table, not wanting to see what their faces would look like once they realized what I had done.

I started heading back out towards the athletic field, just in case he was still there, but on my way out I saw Todoroki coming in. He shot me a vicious glare. For a long second, the two of us just stared at each other, his mismatched eyebrows narrowed, my own expression apologetic, before he turned and walked away to go get something to eat. In retrospect maybe I should have followed him. Instead my feet just kept moving, carrying me out of the cafeteria and in search of a quiet corner to sit and meditate. Yuigahama would probably wind up making my excuses for me, or if I really needed to I could talk to Todoroki after he'd cooled off. Was it really cowardice if I avoided an awkward conversation in favor of stockpiling quirks I would need for the finals?

Undoubtedly, the answer was yes.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

Shouts and laughter filled the stadium as the students who didn't make the final round scurried around like ants, hoping against hope that their performance in a scavenger hunt or a three-legged race would do something, anything to impress a pro hero. The smells of butter-covered popcorn, of sizzling hot dogs and fried takoyaki, mingled and gave off a carnival atmosphere. Rubbernecking civilians and greedy journalists added to the air of excitement, murmuring and pointing whenever a student did something flashy or a pro hero stood apart from the crowd and made themselves visible.

Returning to UA's sports festival after graduation was somehow nostalgic.

Also, boring.

I didn't become a hero just because my parents thought it would make the family business look good. I'm sure they thought it was their idea, of course, and I made sure that I toed the line and acted every inch the dutiful daughter doing her utmost to support her parents, but I had known since a very young age that I was going to be a hero. Anything else would have been too easy.

My adorable little sister, unfortunately, had fallen victim to the same rhetorical traps and innocuous suggestions that I had laid out to convince my parents to allow it. Where I had wanted to be a hero - no, needed to be one, because it was the only chance of finding something to do with my life that would be an actual challenge, Yukino wanted to be a hero for the sake of being a hero. So she was boringly trying to follow in my footsteps, boringly rebelling against my parents when they tried to force her into the family business, and boringly doing her best in a boring high school competition in order to win the same boring first place prize that I had won for three boring years running.

But what kind of big sister would I be if I didn't show up to support her?

Ah, well. Boredom was an old, familiar enemy - and I knew just how to deal with it.

Obviously, I just had to make my own fun. "Yahello, Uncle Enji!" I shouted and waved.

Standing intimidatingly with his arms crossed and his mask blazing with tongues of flame was the Number 2 Pro Hero, the second most famed and revered hero in all of Japan. My family's association with him was one of the biggest factors in my own meteoric rise to fame, and I knew for a fact that being seen with me boosted his ratings.

My cute little flower crown was popular with older folks, the traditional crowd loved my Ancient Roman-themed lorica and white tunic skirt, every male between the ages of fourteen and forty-four with a pulse loved how much skin the ensemble showed off, and our uncle-niece dynamic played well with middle-aged housewives and other family-conscious hero fans. Since Endeavor's fanbase hit a lot of those same target markets, the two of us being associated with each other was a win-win.

And if it wasn't, I doubt he would have given me the time of day. "Campestris," Enji said with a nod and a complete lack of a smile. His eyes glanced over me once, then returned to his 'vigilant' stare at the arena. "Here to cheer on your sister?"

"So stuffy, Enji-oji-san! You don't have to be all formal just because I'm here in costume! It's Haruno, Ha. Ru. No!" There was something exquisitely satisfying about acting charming and friendly with someone that I completely distasted. He knew that I couldn't stand him, of course, but we both had to pretend to play nice for the sake of the media. "And it's not just Yuki-chan! I'm rooting for Shoto-kun too!"

Enji nodded. "Of course. I'm sure he will be happy to see you." Happier than he will be to see you, old man.

Speaking of people who would be happy to see me… A sudden thought crossed my mind and I adopted my best disappointed face. "I had intended to cheer for Hayato-kun too, of course, but he got unlucky." Really, how boring of Hayato. And I'd been so hoping he'd go up against Yuki-chan in the tournament so I could watch him squirm, too. "He's a big fan of yours, you know!" I said charmingly. "If you see him you should cheer him up!"

Enji's face changed microscopically from impassive indifference to a complete lack of recognition. "I see. Which one was he?"

I bit my tongue to keep from sighing publicly. Really, Uncle Enji? You've met him multiple times! This is why you're not popular even though you're the number two hero, you know. "The blond one," I said. When he still didn't get it, I took a deep breath for patience. "The one who was flying all around earlier? Got buried in vines at the end?"

"Ah, him." Enji said. Beneath the flames of his mask, his eyes narrowed. "He has a strong quirk, but a tendency to rely too much on his own abilities, even when doing so would be detrimental to him. Not uncommon, in children his age. I hope he learns from the experience."

A little shiver of glee went up the back of my spine.. I was going to have to repeat to Hayato ex-act-ly what his idol just said, frowny-face and all. I wonder if I could do the voice, too? "I'm sure he will," I said, a fresh and sunny smile on my face. After all, I would make sure of it.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! MUCHACHOS Y MUJERES! ARE. YOU. READYYYYY?! THE THRILLING TOURNAMENT FINALE IS FINALLY ABOUT TO BEGIN!"

So dramatic, Mic-sensei. "Are there any matches that you're interested in this year, other than Shoto-kun's?" I asked Uncle Enji while feigning nonchalance.

"Not particularly," he said, still impassively watching with folded arms. "There's generally not much significance to a competition of this level."

Heh heh heh. I know something you don't know! "Really?" I asked, my voice dripping with false innocence. "That's surprising! I'd have thought you would have been interested in the first match! I've been hearing a lot about Midoriya-kun from Shoto-kun and Yuki-chan, you know?"

For the first time since I had approached him, Uncle Enji turned slightly to look at me directly. "I wasn't aware that you and Shoto were keeping in contact," he said, a fraction of interest entering his tone of voice. "And I had heard from your parents that Yukino had been in a rebellious phase lately as well. Do you speak to them often?"

So predictable, Uncle Enji! "Of course I do!" I lied, "I'm their favorite oldest cousin and big sister, after all!" Actually, Yuki-chan was almost as cold towards me as she was towards our parents, and Shoto-kun was a frigid stick in the mud, but then again it's not like he knew either of them well enough to disprove what I was saying. "Why wouldn't we stay in touch?" I asked, twisting the knife. "We're family!"

The crowd cheered as the contestants entered the arena together. As the camera zoomed in on their faces, you'd think that Midoriya was the one walking into a doomed match - he had a shaky smile pasted on his face, while Shinso looked cool and determined. For all the good it would do him. "So?" Enji asked, once more returning his attention to the field. "Is there a reason that I should be interested in this Midoriya child?"

"Hmm, well, maybe not," I said girlishly. "So much of what I hear from Yuki-chan and Shoto-kun is just rumors, after all." Actually, most of what I knew about the first years this year came from my adorable kouhai Meguri-chan. Her Detective quirk was useful that way, after all. But I couldn't help the slight deception, not when the faces Uncle Enji tried to hide were just so interesting. "I'm sure Midoriya isn't really All Might's protege," I lied.

Below us on the field, Midoriya Izuku burst into green lightning, charging Shinso in a blur of motion and handily tossing him out of the ring almost before the buzzer had finished echoing through the stadium. "Kind of impressive," I said idly in the gaps between Present Mic's screamed attempts at making a completely one-sided beatdown seem interesting, "especially because he's some kind of late bloomer. Shoto-kun said Midoriya can only handle five percent of his total power without hurting himself, can you imagine?"

Ah, the power of garbled high school gossip, as collected by Meguri-chan and weaponized by me. Enji's eyes looked like they were going to burn holes in Midoriya Izuku's back as the nervous-looking boy walked back out of the arena the way that he came. "Five percent… is it," he muttered. Suddenly, Enji turned on his heel and started walking back into the passageways of the stadium.

"Where are you going?" I asked cheerfully, following my uncle closely. "You'll miss the next fight! Those girls will be sad not to see the Number Two Pro Hero watching, you know!"

"If the rest of the fights for the first round are as quick as this one was," Enji said without slowing down even a little, "it won't be long before Shoto's match. I'd like to motivate him properly before then."

"I'll come with you!" I chirped, inwardly rolling my eyes at Enji's melodrama. Shoto obviously wouldn't hate using fire so much if you weren't such an asshole about it, idiot. It's like you've never even met a teenager before! "You're going to cheer on Yuki-chan after you talk to Shoto, right? We can go together!"

He paused mid-step for a second, as if the thought that he might want to support his niece had only just crossed his mind. I suppressed the urge to kick him down a flight of stairs. "Of course," he replied smoothly.

For a few seconds we just walked, the ever-present narration of Present Mic echoing through the hallway. "Matter! Versus! Gravity! In one corner, we have the recommended student, Yaoyorozu Momo! Versus her classmate from 1-A, Uraraka Ochako! Which of these two fundamental forces of nature will come out on top? Second match… Start!"

"Whoa! And Uraraka starts with a swift attack, while Yaoyorozu conjures a long weapon to keep Uraraka's devastating fingers at range! But even so, Uraraka is pressing forward, doing her best to get in close!"

"It's too bad you didn't think of visiting Shoto-kun earlier, Uncle." I said with a fake pout. "It sounds like we're missing something fun." More fun than boring hallways, anyways.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. "You're welcome to return to the stadium if you like."

"Endeavor!" Suddenly, a familiar-sounding voice boomed through the corridor. "I thought I heard a familiar voice. It's been a long time!" There he was, larger than life, in a pinstripe suit that just barely managed to contain his muscular form, his trademark twin forelocks standing mighty and proud above his skull. All Might, in the flesh. The corners of my mouth curled up in a genuine smile. The Number One Pro Hero. How interesting. "Oh? And who is this lovely young lady?"

"Yukinoshita Haruno, Hero Name: Campestris," I said smoothly before Uncle Enji could intervene, "pleased to meet you." I bowed respectfully, but inside my mind was going at a thousand miles an hour. Did All Might not know that my uncle hated him? Or was he another person like me, capable of putting on a mask that only a few could see through? Every word and gesture he offered towards my uncle oozed with sincerity. And did he really not recognize me? I was polling in the mid-sixties on the Hero Billboard, so that was unlikely - but why pretend not to know me?

"It's been about ten years since the last time we got a chance to talk, hasn't it Enji?" All Might said innocently, as though the top two heroes in the country could possibly have avoided each other for an entire decade by coincidence. "I've been meaning to find you, we should sit down and have tea some time."

"Hmph." Uncle Enji snorted. "I'm a busy man, Toshinori." Toshinori? It must be All Might's family name - Uncle Enji wouldn't call someone he hated by their personal name. "I don't have time to sit down and have tea. Or to stand here and chat. My son's match will be coming up soon."

"Oh! By cancelling her weight reduction on Yaoyorozu's staff, Uraraka caused the change in weight to pull Yaoyorozu's defenses out of position! She's nullified her gravity! Is it all over? Will Yaoyorozu be able to make a comeback before she floats out of the ring? Yes! Yaoyorozu creates an object in mid air, and by throwing it manages to reverse her momentum! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, folks! What's more, it looks like she's noticed that the objects she creates aren't affected by Uraraka's gravity negation, because she's created an anchor to keep herself from floating away!"

I smiled sweetly and pulled out a notepad and pen from my cleavage. "It sounds like we have at least a little bit more time, doesn't it? All Might, do you think I could get an autograph?"

"Of course, young lady!" All Might boomed, "Anything for a fan!"

Hmm. What if he didn't approach the two of us because of Endeavor? It wouldn't be the first time that an older hero had awkwardly tried to pick me up, after all. Well, there was an easy way to check. "Ne, All Might," I said in a cutesy voice, "I've been hoping to thank you for looking after my younger sister. Yukino-chan is very lucky to have you teaching her, I'm so jealous!" I leaned in to 'watch him sign my notebook', squeezing my shoulders together slightly as I did so to emphasize my cleavage and watching him for any signs of interest.

"Ha ha ha ha!" All Might laughed jovially, still every inch the professional. "I'm lucky to have her as a student! And, of course, young Shoto-shonen as well!" He added with a nod towards Endeavor. He offered me back my notebook with the smile that made him the number 1 hero in Japan.

Still inconclusive, huh? Fine, time to break out the big guns. I let myself blush prettily, bashfully reaching to take my notebook back. "Well, I guess being able to call you senpai is almost as good, since we're both alumni." Just as my hand was about to touch the paper I leaned forward and grasped All Might's hand with both of mine, batting my lashes as I looked up and implored him, "Ne, which one do you prefer? All Might-sensei, or All Might-senpai?"

It was good that I had planned out my attack in advance, because as soon as my skin touched his my thoughts were thrown into chaos. After years of practice with my Quirk, Life Drain, I had a more or less instinctive feel for how much health and vitality anyone I touched had. Without that sense for others' well-being, it would have been easy for me to accidentally take more energy than someone could safely afford. I had expected All Might to be a volcano of energy, a rampant stallion, or at the very least an aging but still mighty bear. Instead, his life force felt like a bird with a broken wing, struggling to escape from my palm.

All Might gently extracted his hand from mine, coughing slightly in implied embarrassment. "I'm flattered, Yukinoshita-san, but there's no need to call me by any special titles. Just All Might is fine."

How interesting. All Might's public persona was flawless. There was not a single hint that he was interested in me on any level other than the personal, barely even a sign that he had noted me making a pass at him, and absolutely no crack in the facade concealing the fact that - judging by his lack of vitality - he was either completely exhausted or slowly dying. He wasn't out of breath, nor mussed, and he didn't smell of sweat or sex. Was it cancer? An old injury? Simple wear and tear from the use of his quirk? No matter which, it explained why he would be looking for my uncle - someone would have to take over as Number One after he retired, after all. The sudden transition to becoming a teacher and the adoption of a protege fit the theory as well. It could be something else, something innocuous, but if it wasn't… then it spoke of a long-running, exceptionally successful deception of not only the Japanese public but the majority of heroes as well.

And where there was one deception of that scale, odds were that there would be another. How delicious would it be if the Symbol of Peace, the earnest, jovial, noble icon of Japanese Heroism… was in fact a calculating, vicious, manipulative schemer just like myself? Despite myself, I felt my false smile turn real, and I hugged All Might's autograph close to my chest. "Mou, that's not fair, All Might! You're one of Uncle Enji's friends, so if you're going to call me Yukinoshita-san, I'm going to call you Toshinori-san!"

"Ah ha ha ha ha. I suppose you have me there," All Might said, adopting an air of tolerant amusement toward a misbehaving junior despite the fact that his name was usually something he kept secret. "As long as it's not in front of the media, I suppose that's fine."

"Wow! Yaoyorozu, saving herself from a hard fall to the stadium floor by making a last second airbag!" Present Mic's voice shrieked, cutting through the sudden awkward silence. "But it looks like that knocked the wind out of her, because Uraraka was able to tag her and send her floating up again! This is starting to look like the end for Yaoyorozu, folks!"

"Come," Endeavor said gruffly. "We're running out of time. Goodbye, Toshinori." He started walking away, not caring to wait to see if I was following.

"A-ah, sure," All Might said, a hint of regret in his voice as though he was sorry to see Uncle Enji go. I wondered if he hated my uncle as much as my uncle hated him? "We'll have to catch up another time."

A sudden wicked impulse seized my mind, and I took a few steps after my uncle, only to stop and turn back to look over my shoulder. I gave All Might a shy, tremulous smile. "Toshinori-san… you aren't the type to play favorites, right? If you neglect Shoto-kun or my Yuki-chan… I'll be mad, you know?"

He shook his head calmly. "Of course not, Yukinoshita-san. I swear to you that I will treat all of my students equally and fairly."

I faked a smile of relief. "That's great! But… you should probably get back to the arena before Yaoyorozu-chan and Uraraka-chan find out you weren't watching them, don't you think?"

The facade cracked, revealing a look of surprised guilt, and the nearly certain knowledge that it was just a deception layered within another deception sent little chills of pleasure running down my spine. "Bye-bye, Toshinori-san," I said sweetly, and ran to catch up to Uncle Enji, smiling all the way.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a maiden in love?

Sadly, my good mood was not to last. As the second match concluded with Uraraka's victory and Present Mic moved on to narrating a rather boring-sounding match between Tensei-kun's younger brother and some kid with an electric quirk, I was forced to watch as Uncle Enji berated my cute little cousin, scolding him for his fourth place spot in the cavalry battle and his near failure at the hands of "his very own flame."

So boring, Uncle Enji. So dull. You don't even realize it, but all of this torment you're inflicting on poor Shoto is going to be useless soon. It's all so banal and predictable that not even the faces you'll make when you find out the truth will be entertaining.

Hmmmm. Should I spice things up a bit?

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

"An absolutely stunning display of speed from Iida Tenya! After trying to tease out Kaminari's electricity with feint after feint, wearing his opponent's focus and attention down, Iida-kun uses a burst of speed surpassing anything he's shown in the tournament just far to decide everything in an instant! That's right folks, Iida Tenya just proved he was faster. Than. Lightning!"

"Haah." I let out a sigh of irritation as I opened my eyes. Damn it, how the hell was I supposed to focus on stockpiling quirks when Present Mic kept using obnoxiously inane cliches? Well, if I was being honest with myself, my mind hadn't been focusing well to begin with. After my encounter with Todoroki I had found a quiet grove of trees within earshot of the stadium, and had intended to sit and stockpile there. But the breeze was pleasant, the shade was cool, and I wound up spending more time than I'd meant to spend just sitting, appreciating nature, and trying to decide what quirk to try and implement a last second recharge on.

My first match was against Monoma Neito. Without anybody's quirk but mine to copy during the match he would be pretty easy pickings. I should be able to show off at least a little bit there, so there was no need to stockpile a specific quirk with him in mind. Unfortunately, after him I would have to fight Bakugo. That fight would be… less easy. I had a lot of quirks that I could use against Bakugo, but frankly none of them felt like they were hard counters to his abilities. I didn't have very much experience watching people fight and trying to break down how to beat them, but even a little bit of extra insight into how Bakugo might fight was better than nothing. I would have to watch him fight for inspiration, though, which again precluded trying to prepare a quirk for him specifically.

And so, I wound up settling on recharging Hot Skin. Frankly speaking, the bit of psychological comfort I got for having a tool on hand to deal with Todoroki Shoto would more useful against Bakugo than any quirk I could have stockpiled. As to whether either Todoroki or I would reach the finals… well, we'd see.

By the time I made it back to the area where our class was seated, Present Mic was already announcing the next match. "Now, for our fourth match! The Amphibian Assassin, Tsuyu Asui! Versus! The Ice-Cold contestant with a hidden hot side, Todoroki Shoto! Start! Tsuyu-chan, right out of the gate, trying for an immediate blitz! She's - "

Just as I was nearing the top of the stairs and preparing to head for a seat, in a split second everything changed. I went from being able to see the bleachers across the stadium to my view being dominated by an enormous wall of ice. I sprinted up the last few steps, running to the railing. The competition field looked like a winter wasteland, with Tsuyu having been pushed so far up and back by the rising crystals of cold that she was suspended mid-air above the concrete. As the cameras zoomed in on her, I saw her eyes slowly close, looking hazy and vulnerable as though she wasn't entirely aware of her surroundings.

The stadium was stunned into silence. Even Present Mic's usual reactions were absent. It was a flashy, overwhelming display of power that almost nobody wanted to cheer.

"Jeez!" I heard Kaminari say from the stands. "Todoroki's bringing out the big guns! Wonder who pissed him off?"

"...Sorry, Tsuyu." I muttered under my breath. Seriously, Todoroki? If you're pissed off that I avoided you, take it out on me, not on Tsuyu! "I'll make it up to you." Somehow.

On the field, Todoroki melted the ice around Tsuyu. As she fell forward out of the ice, he caught her in his arms, the camera zooming in to his face to show an expression of regret. Well, I suppose if he was going to overreact and throw a tantrum in the middle of the athletic field, at least it was with the ice half of his quirk and not the fire half. Recovery Girl was good, but I bet even she couldn't fix "extra-crispy."

Seeing the massive display of ice made my palms itch. I wanted to copy his quirk, damn it. For weeks I'd been good, trying to respect Todoroki's personal wishes, not wanting to cause waves in the classroom, but if this was how he acted when he got a little upset then maybe he didn't deserve to have those wishes respected - or maybe that was just my greed and envy talking. If I focused really hard on how having a copy of his quirk would keep me from getting frozen, did that justify me taking it despite his explicit lack of permission? I'd already stolen a copy of All Might's quirk, but that had been in the heat of the moment; somehow, the idea of choosing to break someone's trust as a premeditated act felt like it would be worse. Well, if we wound up facing each other in a head to head battle, all bets would be off. I was nice, but I wasn't so nice that I'd give myself frostbite for Todoroki's sake.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement. I turned to the left and saw Class 1-B, standing up and filing out of the stands en masse, leaving just the girl in glasses with the Mushroom quirk and the frizzy-haired Orimoto Kaori behind. A lot of them shot me nasty glares as they passed, too, and the final person to leave was Monoma Neito, who gave me a vicious smirk as he passed by.

A cold pit of dread formed in the bottom of my stomach. "Hey, Orimoto," I called out over the divider between the two classes to where she sat at the far end of the 1-B section. "Are they…"

"All going to support Monoma and letting him copy their quirks?" Orimoto called back with a grin. "What, you didn't see that coming? Hahahaha! Hilarious, Hikigaya!"

"Heh heh," I laughed awkwardly. "Right, that makes sense… you decided not to go with them?" I asked. It was a little strange, actually. From the way she acted in middle school, I would have expected her to leap at the chance to take me down a peg.

"What would be the point?" Orimoto asked rhetorically. "I'm still in the competition. If they let Monoma use their quirks, there's a chance a pro might see it and get interested in them. If I let him use my quirk, and he somehow does something more impressive with it than I do, that just makes me look bad." Then she smiled at me, the same friendly, open smile that made my heart beat faster not very long ago. "Besides, what would the people from Jakku Middle think if I helped Monoma out against you?"

"Depends on whether they remembered who I was or not," I said self-deprecatingly.

"Depends - hahahaha! You're too funny, Hikigaya!" Orimoto Kaori said, as though I had been joking. Then again, that was who Orimoto Kaori was. The sort of person who assumed that everyone was friends with her, just because that was how she wanted them to be. I had admired that about her, once, and then resented it. Now, I wasn't sure.

Curiously, I turned to the other girl remaining in the 1-B stands, sitting significantly closer to us than Orimoto, and in the front row whereas Orimoto was in the middle. It didn't look like she was there just to keep Orimoto company. "What about you… uh, your name was Ebina-san, right?" I asked her. "Why didn't you go down to let him copy your quirk?"

She towards me with a sad smile, one hand absentmindedly running along the frame of her glasses to guide a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear. "My quirk… isn't very nice," she replied, a note of melancholy in her voice. "If he copied it without knowing how to use it and someone got hurt, I wouldn't like that."

"Ah," I replied. Damn. Were you holding back during the cavalry battle? That was both terrifying and a little cool. You're kind of a sweet girl, aren't you Ebina-chan?

Then, a gleam entered her eye, and she adjusted her glasses as a perverted smile crossed her face. "Plus, there's no way I'm missing this match! It's a natural top and a switchy bottom! Bakugo's exploding passion, slowly wearing down Kirishima's rigid resistance! Uhuhu, uhuhu!"

Although, now that I think about it, rotting food sometimes smells sickly sweet too.

As I stepped away from the 1B stands and turned towards my class, I saw that all of them were looking at me. Crap. Why couldn't there have been a fight for them all to watch? Unfortunately the giant iceberg that Todoroki had made was still melting, so there was no way to use the excuse that I needed to get ready for my match without it looking really suspicious and awkward.

What else could I do? I took a seat.

The first one to speak was Yaoyorozu, her ponytail disheveled from her fight with Uraraka, who despite the telltale fatigue of having been healed by Recovery Girl came up to me with anxiety-driven speed. "Hikigaya, you're alright! When nobody said they had seen you since lunch, I was worried you might -"

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I didn't mean to cause you trouble."

She shook her head, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "N-no, you didn't - I mean, maybe a little, but it's - it was understandable."

All these Hero Students were too damn nice for their own good. I'd up and vanished on Yaoyorozu when she should have been focusing on preparing for her match, and not only did she not blame me, she sounded like she'd already forgiven me and was maybe even blaming herself for having 'caused' the issue in the first place. "I, uh, I'm sorry I didn't watch your match," I said quietly, not able to look her in the eye. "I listened, though. It, uh, sounded like it was a pretty close fight."

Yaoyorozu sighed and closed her eyes. "Not as close as I would have liked," she admitted wistfully. "Uraraka-san had me on the back foot from the beginning."

"Ehe, don't say that Momo-chan!" Uraraka said. She was sitting in the front row next to Midoriya, smiling sheepishly as she put one hand behind her head, her long brown bangs framing her round face. "You gave me a really hard time, you know? The whole time I was feeling like if I made one mistake then you'd get me."

As usual, Yaoyorozu was uncomfortable with direct praise, and she looked to the side, hugging herself slightly. "Thanks, Ochako-chan."

"Truly, the Sports Festival is a Carnival of Darkness," Tokoyami Fumikage proclaimed, "pitting friend against friend, classmate against classmate."

"I disagree, Tokoyami-kun!" Iida Tenya said, karate-chopping at the air as he stood up from his seat next to Midoriya. "Everyone here is an aspiring hero, after all! I'm sure that everyone understands that we are all engaging in fair competition, and that no hard feelings will persist for long."

I looked over my shoulder at the almost empty 1-B stands. "Uh huh," I muttered sarcastically. "No hard feelings. Right."

"You misunderstand, Iida. I agree, it is a dim darkness," Tokoyami uttered solemnly, "but only by submerging ourselves in its depths will we acquire the fortitude to plunge into even deeper and more perilous pits."

"I'm gonna be honest with ya Tokoyami, I have no idea what you just said," Kaminari butted in with a grin, "but that stuff you were talkin' about with Iida just now reminded me. Hey, Class Prez!" He called out.

My attention turned to him. "Yeah?"

"No hard feelings on zapping you earlier, right? We're cool?" He asked.

I stared at the idiot blonde's distinctive zigzag hair in disbelief. Was it possible that the bursts of idiocy his quirk caused when it shorted his brain out weren't temporary? Even at 1/108 potency, was it safe for me to use? How was it even possible for him to come up with such an insincere apology and think it was okay? And how lucky did he have to be that he was asking it in a social environment where it would be impolite for me to refuse?

Oh, well. Given the stress his quirk put him through when he uses it as heavily as he was using it during the cavalry battle, it was probable that he was just running on instinct and following orders from Todoroki when he did it, anyways. "Uh, yeah. Sure," I managed.

Out of curiosity, I snuck a glance at Yukinoshita and Yaoyorozu. Yaoyorozu looked slightly cheered as I replied to Kaminari, but Yukinoshita was staring straight ahead, gazing at the athletic field from her seat at the far end of Class 1-A's seating section like she wasn't even paying attention.

From his seat next to Kaminari, Tobe elbowed him in the ribs. "Man, you're lucky the Class Prez is nice, Denki! He let you off way lighter than I would have!" Don't misunderstand, Tobe. I only let him off because I hadn't been expecting much in the first place. "Hey, hey, how much you wanna bet that Todoroki's gonna be doing dogezas to Tsuyu-chan later?"

"Hmm, he does seem like the type," Ashido said, putting one vivid pink finger up to her equally fluorescent lips in thought. "Do you think it'll be just that though? I mean, the way he picked up Asui-chan after he melted her out of the ice was kind of sweet and romantic, don't you think?"

Jiro groaned in disgust. One of her metal-tipped earlobes stretched out, detouring past Tobe's dreadlocks to poke Ashido in the forehead. "Give it a rest already, Mina! Jeez, are you pink between the ears, too?"

Ashido grinned cheerfully. "Brains are already pink, so yup!"

There was a short, despairing silence. Finally Jiro sighed, hanging her head. "Mina. There's a reason they call it grey matter, you know."

"Oh! Right! I remember now, hehe." Ashido bonked herself in the head with a fist, then smiled sheepishly for a few seconds before her black-scleraed eyes opened wide in confusion. "Wait," she asked, "since brains are grey, why are they usually pink in diagrams and toys and pictures and stuff?"

"Healthy living brains actually often take on a pinkish tone due to the blood flowing through them," Yaoyorozu volunteered, "but I imagine that the full pink tone in images is probably due to marketing concerns."

Ashido stuck her tongue out at Jiro. "See, Kyoka-chan? My brain's just extra-healthy!"

Whatever comeback Jiro would have offered was interrupted by Present Mic. "All right folks, sorry about the delay, but the ice has been melted so we are back in business! Our next match features the number one performer on the UA Entrance Exam! His temper is as explosive as his quirk! Bakugo Katsuki! Versus! The manly and passionate Kirishima Eijirou! He's got rocky skin and an iron will!"

"Hikigaya-san." Iida said strictly. "You should make your way to the contestant waiting area. It would be unbecoming of 1-A's president to inconvenience the faculty by being late to your match."

I nodded, standing up and putting one hand on the railing. "I'll go in a minute," I replied, looking down on the field proper. Bakugo and Kirishima were walking towards the battlefield, both cracking knuckles, necks, shoulders, and other body joints in a last-second display of bravado and intimidation. "Kirishima won't get knocked out right away. If I'm going to be fighting Bakugo next round I'd like to get a look at how he fights, first."

"Hey, you never know! Eijiro-kun might be able to pull something off," Ashido said in irritation. After a second, she noticed that everyone was looking at her, and blushed a slightly darker shade of pink. "What?"

"Eijiro, huh?" Miura asked, turning around in her seat to look back at Ashido. "You seem to be on pretty good terms with Kirishima, huh?"

"No, no, no," Ashido said, putting her hands up defensively. "It's not like that, we were just classmates in middle school, plus he's in my HEART group."

Jiro smirked. "He's in your heart something, anyway," she teased.

"I told you, it's not like that!" Ashido said, embarrassed. "Your - your brain is pink!"

"Shoe fits a little differently when it's on the other foot, doesn't it?" Jiro said, leaning back in smug satisfaction.

"He's in our HEART group," Iida interjected, "and I have to say that I agree with Ashido. While Bakugo's quirk is powerful, Midoriya was able to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat during our first combat training session, mostly without the aid of his own quirk. Given Kirishima's resilience and combat skill, him beating Bakugo isn't out of the question."

"I'm sorry, Iida-kun, but you're wrong." Midoriya said, his attention laser-focused on the battlefield. "In a real fight… Bakugo… his combat ability is the real deal."

"Are you ready?" Present Mic called. On the jumbotrons, we could see Kirishima and Bakugo adopt identical grins of challenge. "Staaart!"

The two of them took one step towards each other. Then another, faster, then another. Just as they were about to collide, there was an enormous THOOOOOM. A percussive burst of noise erupted as Bakugo's heavy haymaker erupted into a cloud of fire and smoke.

As it slowly cleared, I saw that Kirishima looked a little different than he had when we had our Battle Training together. At the time, his skin had looked almost lumpy under the effect of his quirk, as though there had been a layer of rough stone beneath his skin. Five weeks later, it still looked blocky, but now there were clear lines and angles connecting the armor plates, almost like a character from a low-polygon fighting game. Most importantly, other than some scorch marks on his clothes, he looked undamaged. The camera zoomed in on his face, and we could see his mouth move.

"Hey, Kyoka-chan," Miura asked, "can you make out what Kirishima's saying?"

"All the way from here? Over the crowd?" Jiro asked, before shrugging and stretching both her earlobes out to make contact with the ground. "I can try…" She paused for a second, before starting to echo Kirishima's words in a lower-pitched tone of voice than she usually spoke. "... to disappoint you, but that barely trickled - no, tickled, ever since I started training ike Hikigaya suggested my armor's been getting crazy strong."

Her voice shifted up a pitch even as the camera switched to Bakugo. "Eh? Is that so? Then I'll just have to keep pounding you until you give in."

"Pound me all you like, no matter what, I can take it!" She said, once again mimicking Kirishima's lower tones.

"Gehbo!" A strangled noise erupted from the 1-B stands as the girl named Ebina spit out her cola. She put the soda cup down to try to wipe herself off, only to set only half of it on the ledge, which set the cup to tipping even further.

Just as it was about to completely fall over and spill all over her shoes, a voice rang out. "Don't spill! Turn upright slowly! Move back four centimeters onto the ledge!" Tobe Kakeru, having stood up to see what the commotion was, had saved the cup just in time.

Almost simultaneously, Iida Tenya zipped towards the barrier between the two seating sections, one hand holding out a handkerchief. "Here!" He said cheerfully. "Use this!"

"Float over to her!" Tobe shouted, and the handkerchief escaped from Iida's fingers and fluttered through the air, pausing in front of Ebina's face.

Ebina's eyes widened behind her half-rimmed glasses, and she looked from Iida to Tobe with eyes that probably appeared to be full of gratitude as she accepted the handkerchief. "Thanks. You guys helped me out together, huh? You must be pretty good friends, right? I think that's pretty cool."

"Oh yeah, totally!" Tobe said, placing one hand behind his dreadlocked head in embarrassment.

Really Tobe? You've barely even talked to Iida as far as I can tell, but you're going to act like you guys are best friends to impress the fujoshi girl? Wait, did you not notice that she was a sex maniac?

"Iida-kun might act super serious all the time, but he's like, a really good guy!" Tobe continued. "When we were fighting the villains at the USJ, he pulled me out of the way of this really scary mist villain, you know? And he was like, super loyal and refused to just run away even though he could!"

"Tobe-san, no, Tobe-kun, I had no idea you felt that way!" Iida said, looking slightly embarrassed. "I admit that I initially thought you were frivolous, but after a while I started envying your friendliness and your ability to get along with others! I - I'd like it if we could be friends, Tobe-kun!"

"Whoa, Iida-kun, like, me too!"

Ebina's look at the two of them was like the face Komachi got in front of a bowl of really good curry. A wide open smile… eyes shimmering with excitement… just a hint of drool… shivering in disgust, I turned back to the fight going on below.

Watching Bakugo fight Kirishima was like watching an attack helicopter fight an armored freight train. Kirishima could take Bakugo's blows, though they were slowly wearing him down, but every time that he tried to counterattack Bakugo just used his superior maneuverability to dance out of the way.

Maybe, if you were someone like Midoriya or Yukinoshita, fighting Bakugo in hand-to-hand combat was possible. However, as Yukinoshita had pointed out not very long ago, I had zero experience with that sort of thing. That meant I was going to have to rely on quirks. I should be able to mimic Kirishima's resilience at least a few times, so fighting a little bit like him wouldn't be the worst idea, but where he was limited at trying to catch up to within arms' reach of Bakugo, unlike Kirishima I had a few ranged quirks that I could take advantage of.

Fewer than I'd like.

If I was going to have any chance of beating Bakugo, that meant that I was going to have to take out Monoma in hand-to-hand.

Iida had been right - if I hung around up here for much longer, I'd just wind up inconveniencing everyone. I turned to leave, but as I did the profile of Yukinoshita's face caught the corner of my eye. Even now, she still hadn't said a word to me, or so much as acknowledged my presence. It was only natural for her to side with her cousin, of course, but the rejection still stung. For a second, I contemplated waving goodbye, maybe even wishing Yukinoshita and Ashido good luck in their match.

Instead, I wound up just turning and walking by myself down the tunnel toward the contestant waiting rooms.

The last sound I heard from the stands was the heavy sigh of Hayama Hayato as I passed him by.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

I didn't know if I should have come to the waiting room earlier, or just skipped it entirely. Maybe if I had had time to sit and focus, I would have eventually been able to calm down and center myself. And if I had waited until the end of Kirishima and Bakugo's fight, I would have been in too much of a hurry to fret. Sitting and listening to the irregular drumbeat of Bakugo's explosions, it felt like I was in an unpleasant swampy valley between the two extremes. D

It was hard to sit still. There was nothing to do but sit and listen to the broadcast of the fight, or to pace back and forth anxiously. If I'd had someone with me, maybe I could have distracted myself with conversation, but as usual, I was alone. On the other hand, I couldn't think of anyone who I would have wanted with me at a moment like this. Komachi, maybe? On the other hand, it would be hard to keep her from charging out and exacting vengeance on anyone who tried to hurt me, so maybe that would be more trouble than it was worth?

With nothing better to do, I eventually started stretching. It'd be embarrassing as hell if I finally got out in front of the crowds and lost the fight because I pulled a muscle. When Present Mic finally ended the wait by announcing Bakugo's victory, I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. With one last stretch, I left the room. The corridor leading to the field wasn't long, and it was so tall and wide that I could think of very few people whose quirks would make it difficult for them to make their way down the hallway, but something about the echoing emptiness almost felt claustrophobic. As I approached the wide open gate, my hands reflexively balled into fists.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a special fight, a rarely-seen battle of the power copiers!" Mic shouted. "On the right side of the field, it's class 1-A's president, Hikigaya Hachiman! In terms of sheer versatility, he's already shown that he's hard to beat!" I stepped out into the sunlight, into the view of literally thousands of cheering people - no, Hachiman, don't think about that, just think about the fight - and tried to fake a confident smile. I just had to remember that Cyberpunch was waiting for me to do something impressive, so no matter how uncomfortable I was staring down thousands of pro heroes and other fans, I couldn't let it show.

As I got closer to the concrete square that represented the actual field, Present Mic spoke up again. "And coming from the left, we have Monoma Neito! Unlike Hikigaya, the copies of his quirks are at full power, but in exchange they're on a time limit, so I promise to finish my introductions fast!" Almost reflexively, I stopped staring up at the crowds and looked across the stadium to the opposite entrance. Even though I'd been expecting it, what I saw there still made the butterflies in my stomach seem to mutate into venomous wasps. The majority of 1-B was there, half lining either side of the hallway, and as Present Mic announced him Monoma came running down the gap between them, his arms out to either side to touch each one in turn.

"Oh, what's this?" Present Mic asked, "It seems like almost everyone in class 1-B has lined up at the entrance to the stadium to offer their classmate a chance to give them a high-five! And, of course, a chance to copy their quirks! What do you think, Eraserhead? Is there any way that Hikigaya can stand against an entire classroom's worth of quirks all at once?"

"If anyone stands a chance it's Hikigaya," Eraserhead half-mumbled into his mic. "Not only did he use his power copy quirk to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of everybody in 1-B before the school festival, he also wrote those capabilities up and shared them with his classmates."

I did my best not to flinch. What the hell! I couldn't tell if the teachers were trying to advertise me to potential pros, or trying to humiliate me in front of them. I could literally hear the murmurs going through the audience as they discussed the revelation. Either way, the news' effect on Monoma was discouraging. He'd been smiling artificially at the audience, waving as he tried to get their attention, but on hearing the news that I'd investigated him his smile shifted into a vicious smirk. In a smooth motion, his feet slid a little bit further apart into a ready stance, and his hands dropped into position by his hips, his elbows bent as though he was preparing to throw a punch. It looked professional, like he had actually studied how to fight.

What should I do? How should I start the fight? I knew from copying his quirk that Monoma couldn't hold onto all seventeen of those quirks at once, but his act of pretending to copy them all meant I would have no idea which ones he was using. He did have a timer; should I try to run it out? Wait for his powers to disappear, then finish him off? It was tempting, but my goal here wasn't really to win. It was to impress. Winning would help, but as long as I didn't embarrass myself even a close fight against Monoma would probably still look pretty good. Running away meant risking never getting a chance to show off anything at all.

I had to fight.

I brought my own hands up as well, just to avoid standing there looking like I had no idea what I was doing. But while my physical preparations might have been haphazard, I already had Ooze and Mime fused inside the constellation in my head, with a tendril already reaching out to Homomorphism for stability. "Alright then ladies and gentlemen, are you ready?"

No, but here goes anyway.

"Start!"

I almost lost in the first five seconds of the match. I was so focused on Monoma's upper body, so ready for him to throw a punch or shoot me with a sudden pair of horns that I missed it when he turned the cement underneath me to mud. By the time I tried to jump away with Stockpile-enhanced strength, my feet already had nothing to push off of, and reluctantly I blew my second charge of Power Triangle to fly out of the mud just in time to avoid Monoma resolidifying the ground.

Over the newly solidified ground he charged, and I landed to meet him. Present Mic's comments and the sound of the crowd faded into a dull roar in the background as I sprinted directly at Monoma, arm raised for a punch. Monoma had a limit on how many quirks he could copy, so there was a chance that he didn't have any that boosted his strength. A small one, admittedly, but at least by clashing head-to-head against him I could force him to show his hand.

Literally, as it turned out, as Monoma's swinging fist suddenly ballooned to startling size. When I punched his fist, it was like punching a steel wall, or maybe a speeding car. I went skidding backwards in a way that felt familiar, almost like it was the day of the entrance exam all over again. I didn't think I had broken a bone this time, though there was too much adrenaline for me to tell right away.

I picked myself up from the ungainly heap that the blow left me lying in only to see Monoma charging forward again, aiming to just slap me all the way out of the ring. My eyes widened in panic. There was no way for me to dodge in time. Instead I switched quirks yet again, blowing my stored charges of Orimoto Kaori's Mist. Monoma's slap passed right through my upper torso as I turned cloudy from the waist up, carrying my shirt and jacket along with it. As my body reformed I pushed forward to get past his swinging hands while he was off balance, getting myself away from the edge of the stage. I snuck in a quick rabbit punch to his floating ribs on general principles despite the fact that I couldn't put any weight behind it, on the premise that Stockpile's assistance would turn the hit into an actually painful blow.

It seemed to work, because his face was twisted in pain as he turned to face me. "You sure do like taking cheap shots, huh Hikigaya?" He gasped, his giant hands forming a defensive wall between the two of us. "Well I hope you enjoyed that one, because it's the last one you're going to get!"

All of a sudden the hair on his head turned bright green and bunched itself up into vines, then surged towards me in a mass more reminiscent of a waterfall than of living plant life. Damn, his quirk lets him copy heteromorphs? Why doesn't my copy of it do that? Enviously, I pulled both my hands back to my sides, bracing myself with one leg back. It was time to break out the big guns. I left one tendril of Ooze-Mime connected to Stockpile, but the other two I coordinated until they were ready to reach out and touch two different quirks simultaneously.

I had two 30% stockpiles saved up of Bakugo's Explosion, and another two 30% charges saved up of the girl from 1-B's Big Hands quirk. Maybe it was cheesy, calling it out like this, but as I ignited twelve hours of painstaking effort in a single split second and channeled all the power I could muster to my hands, I couldn't help but shout out loud. "Combo move! 120% Big Hand Cannon!"

A Bakugo-worthy explosion erupted from the enlarged sweat glands of my enlarged palms, whose enhanced hardness and strength made sure that every ounce of explosive energy was channeled forwards towards Monoma instead of sending me or my hands flying backwards. Monoma was blown off his feet, only the incredible quirk-enhanced toughness of the vines protecting him from the full power of the blast. The tendrils dug themselves into the concrete of the stage to stop him from going flying out of bounds, and for a second I got excited.

This was it! I could do this! I lunged forwards for one of the trailing vines, placed a hand on it, and blew my two 10% charges of Kaminari's Electrification. Frankly, I was nervous about charging it any higher - I had no idea what voltage would be safe for my brain given that I lacked any of the physical adaptations that Kaminari doubtlessly possessed, and similarly had no idea what would be safe for anyone I hit with it. Even the small amount I used was enough - Monoma made a strangled cry of pain as sparks coursed down the vines attached to his skull.

I raced towards Monoma with all the speed that a double attunement of Stockpile could provide, dodging around vines and hoping to get in a knockout blow before he recovered. However, what awaited me on the other side of the tangle of vines between us was a Monoma whose entire skin was covered in steel - from the tips of his toes all the way up to the crown of his now completely bald head. Either Monoma had detached himself from his hair when the electricity hit to protect himself, or the quick transition from Vine to Metal had shaven his head down to baldness. He rose from a crouch in an uppercut that I only barely managed to block, the heavy weight of his metallic form almost enough to push past even my super-strength reinforced arms. Clumsily, almost as an instinct, I hit back.

My punch skidded off of his chrome cheek completely uselessly, and Monoma took advantage of my outstretched arm by grabbing it and throwing me over his shoulder. The world spun around me for a disorienting second before I landed painfully on my spine, the shock of the impact forcing all of the air out of my lungs with a "Guh!"

Looking up at him on my back, I had a great view of Monoma's steely face as it shifted back to a fleshy color even as he smirked at me. Just as I was about to try to pull myself forward, the ground below me turned to quicksand. With one final downward push on my still outstretched arm, Monoma plunged me into the liquefied concrete.

Thick, gloopy mud filled my ears, and nose, and I clenched my jaw tight to keep it from getting into my mouth despite the fact that my empty lungs burned for oxygen. I'd had nightmares about this, ever since the Ooze Villain incident, and for a brief second panic overtook me. Helpless. Immobilized. I thrashed frantically, trying to escape, but there was nothing to grab hold of to push my way out. Slowly, the concrete around me started stiffening. Despite the fact that it was just a high school competition, that there was no way in hell an aspiring hero would murder me on live television, a surge of adrenaline flooded my body as my hindbrain convinced itself that I was going to die.

Then a surge of clearheadedness swept through my body. Damn it, that was two Kawasakis I owed now. In the brief span of focus that the little cockroach's Willpower quirk gave me, I came up with a plan. I needed a quirk to get me out of this situation, and fast, before the teachers called the match. Falcon Flight wouldn't work, I didn't have anything to jump off of to get up to speed. Softening would help loosen the fluid around me temporarily, but Monoma would just firm it back up with his stronger quirk. Gigantify might let me grow out of the muck, but I had no idea how deep he'd made it, and my legs weren't under me.

I opened my eyes, saw that it was pitch black under the mud, and grinned.

A surge of force erupted from my belly button. Mud splattered everywhere. The incredible power of a double-stockpiled Dark Shadow in zero-light conditions surged out of the restraining quicksand as though it was little more than wet tissue paper. And, because I had merged into the Dark Shadow by using a 1-B kid's Black quirk, that meant that I was out of the muck too. I could clearly see Midnight's raised hand from where she had been about to call the match, the look of shock on her face, and the furious look that the bald Monoma made as he switched to Big Hands and slapped the sunlight-weakened Dark Shadow out of the sky.

The blow knocked me free of my shadow, sending my physical body sailing into a hard landing on the concrete. I got to my hands and knees, shaking my head to clear it, only to be slapped down to the ground face first by another giant hand. "Why won't you stay down!" Monoma shouted in frustration.

"Because," I grunted out, "I'm", my body swelled, "not," my skin sprouted fur, my mouth filled with fangs, "DONE YET!" Giant, Beast, and Stockpile combined into a single drastic spurt of growth that made Monoma's giant hands look ordinary in respect to my body. I pushed myself up just enough to swat him away with one taloned paw. He skidded backwards, plunging his invulnerable fingers deep into the concrete to keep from being thrown out of the ring, leaving behind long furrows in the solid rock.

With my temporarily enhanced senses from the Beast form, I could hear just how loud the cheering was. The crowd was going wild, stamping their feet and hollering, and Present Mic's voice was almost loud enough for me to make out what he was saying over the ringing in my ears. Pushing two powerful transformation quirks that hard had cost me, as usual. My gut was roiling, and I stumbled as I got to my feet and shrank back to a normal size.

Monoma smirked as his hands shrunk and his skin once again became metallic and shiny. "What's the matter, Hikigaya?" He taunted. "Getting tired? Hey, you aren't hoping to wait until my copied quirks run out, right?"

Breathing heavily, trying to regain my equilibrium, I narrowed my eyes at him. "And if I was?"

"It turns out," Monoma said smugly, "that when I copy your quirk, it stops all of my other quirks' timers from going down. Which means that I can do this all day."

"Oh yeah?" I shouted back. "Well, know what my copy of your quirk does, baldy?"

"Baldy?! I-" Suddenly he staggered. I charged forward in a flash, grabbed him by his jacket and his waistband, and then with a combination of Gyrate and Death arms spun him in a three hundred and sixty degree circle before tossing him as hard as I could out of the ring. He hit the far wall with a metallic CLANG, and I bent over double in exhaustion, dropping all of my quirks except for Komachi's Homomorphism and trying desperately not to throw up.

"Way less than my copy of Shinso's quirk does, moron," I muttered under my breath.

"Monoma is out of bounds!" I heard Midnight shout. "Winner! Hikigaya Hachiman!"

With an effort of will I stood up straight, raising one tired fist into the air. Originally, I had been saving Shinso's quirk as a cheap shot to take down Bakugo. But now? Hearing the cheers of tens of thousands of people echoing around the stadium?

Spending it was a decision that I somehow couldn't bring myself to regret.


	19. My Valentine's Day Special is Wrong

**Two years ago:**

According to anime, romantic confessions were the sorts of things that took place around the back of the school building, while cherry blossoms were blown by the wind and the sun cast flattering shadows on peoples' faces. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold and snowing outside, so I would have to make do with an empty classroom, the teacher's potted cactus on the desk, and harsh fluorescent lighting. And, hey - it was Valentine's Day, right? That had to make up for everything else.

"Um… so, was there something you needed, Hikigaya-kun?"

Orimoto Kaori. Her name had been running through my head for, gosh, months. Maybe not everybody would understand why I liked her; she was popular, true, but it was a friendly-popular, not the kind of crazy drooling some guys got over vapid upperclassmen like Keimi just because they hit puberty early. Which isn't to say that Orimoto Kaori wasn't pretty. She was, or at least I thought so. The way her bright eyes crinkled when she smiled, the way she kept brushing tufts of cloudy hair behind her ears, the pale line of skin at the nape of her neck I could see when she bent forward in class - but, well, I wasn't superficial. I liked Orimoto Kaori because she was sincere. Because she was kind. She was the sort of person who wanted to be a hero, to help other people, she was _good_. She had a personality that just - I was happier when she was around.

And there was no way in hell I could make myself say any of that! Which was probably a good thing, because it would probably sound creepy as hell, but anyway. I didn't… I had a little hope that maybe she would say yes, obviously, or I wouldn't be doing this. But even if I was rejected, then at least she'd know. I took a deep breath and looked at Orimoto Kaori. She looked uncomfortable, her arms folded in front of her stomach, biting down on one corner of her lip in the cute way that she did when she was nervous.

The butterflies in my stomach multiplied. Maybe she liked me after all? "Orimoto-chan, I-" I think you're beautiful, I really admire you as a person, the fact that you keep working to be a hero is inspiring, I can't stop daydreaming about you, you're practically the only decent person in this cesspit of a school, "I - I like you!" I managed to stammer out. My voice cracked. My fingernails dug into my palms, and my stomach felt like it was in freefall.

For a second she just stood there, stunned, and I hurriedly put the second part of my master plan into play. Over the past few weeks, I'd been practicing with a copy of Arto-kun's Hologram quirk. He could create three-dimensional light sculptures as large and complicated as a human body; that gave me control of just enough volume to create a holographic flower. Unfortunately, all of my practice sessions had been done in my room, in the dark, under calm conditions. Under pressure, the rose I had planned to create came out looking lumpy and misshapen, like a red blob attached to a green stick.

Hideously, I heard a noise from the hallway. A shocked laugh, followed by a susurrus of whispers. Orimoto must have heard it too, because her eyes flickered towards the door before she pasted on a shaky smile. "Ah ha ha," she laughed nervously, "um, thank you Hikigaya-kun, but I'm sorry… this is really a shock. I hardly even know you, so…"

I don't actually remember clearly what happened immediately afterwards, only that I awkwardly left the room and skipped class to sulk up on the roof. Initially, in the aftermath of the rejection, I would be furious at her for saying those words. Just because your friends were watching didn't mean you had to disavow all knowledge of my existence! How embarrassing of a person was I, that you had to pretend like you had barely even spoken to me before?

Later, I would be furious at myself. After all, eventually even I realized that those words had been nothing but the unvarnished truth.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

 **One Year Ago:**

It was official. Too much anime rotted the brain. "Hachiman-kun! My mighty general! My bosom companion, my comrade in arms! Truly, a day like this is one where the brotherhood between men such as ourselves is stronger than ever!" After all, that was the only possible explanation for Zaimokuza Yoshiteru.

I looked up from my bento at the tubby grey-haired oaf, who insisted on wearing a brown leather trench coat during all four seasons. At least during the winter it wasn't completely out of place. I finished chewing the bite of food I had just taken and swallowed forcefully so I could reply. "Sit down already," I said in irritation, "sunlight's rare enough in February without you blocking it."

"Oh ho! Are you practicing a new form of martial arts? Learning to harmonize your ki with the power of the sun? As expected of the almighty Hachiman!" You know we've only got like two months of middle school left, right? Is there a need to keep up the chuuni delusion gag until the very last second? Still, for all that he was a weirdo, Zaimokuza was a decent guy, and he cheerfully moved out of my sunlight to sit next to me.

"More like I decided I had enough regular depression without adding the Seasonal Affective kind to it," I snarked back. "What's up?"

Zaimokuza grabbed my shoulder, the square-framed glasses boxing in his eyes as they stared at me in a way which I'm sure he thought was penetrating or intimidating, but actually just wound up looking kinda stupid. "Hachiman-kun. Forgive me for asking this, but I must be clear. Have you betrayed the sacred brotherhood? Consumed the substance poisonous to the -"

I cut him off, rolling my eyes. "No, Zaimokuza, nothing but giri-choco for me this year, either." I paused for a second, my chopsticks hovering in mid air above my rice. "Komachi doesn't count, right?"

Zaimokuza laughed, placing his hands on his hips. I scooted sideways a little bit on the back steps to avoid getting elbowed in the ribs. "Of course not! It is only chocolate given with romantic love that is fatal to men of ambition such as ourselves!"

"You say that, but we both know that if you were given any that it'd be gone in like, five minutes, right?" I asked.

"Humph. This and that are different! I keep telling you, Hachiman-kun, that my quirk requires an intense expenditure of caloric energy to operate! Thus, even if I have to choke down poison to make the cells of my body operate at full power, I! Will! Not! Falter!" Each and every one of those last four words were accompanied by a 'cool'-looking pose from Zaimokuza as he karate-chopped the air like a dying camel.

"Uh huh," I said dryly. "So what brought this on, anyway? I mean, the fact that I was only ever going to be given chocolate out of obligation should be obvious."

Zaimokuza stopped posing, instead adopting a 'contemplative' stance with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his folded hands. "Your entrance exam to UA is in two weeks, is it not?"

"Twelve days," I said sourly, stabbing at my cold rice out of anxiety. "So?"

"So, at this point, you have already acquired a hero's physique! A hero's fortitude! A hero's muscularity! And unlike me, your mighty form is not hidden under the fuel required for your quirk!" Given that Zaimokuza's general approach to exercise was to pretend that it didn't exist, I sincerely doubted that there was any such thing as a 'mighty form' lurking underneath his strategic fat reserves, but I understood what he was getting at.

I sighed. "Zaimokuza. Yes, girls at our school have all the depth of the average puddle, and absolutely would start liking a boy just because he's in shape. Source: the fact that guys like Yamagata, Hyogo, and Tochigi are actually popular for some bizarre reason. Girls like that aren't going to go for someone like me, and even if they were, it's not like I'd be interested." That was a lie, if a girl confessed to me right now I doubted that I would care who it was, but Zaimokuza was either nice or unobservant enough not to call me out on it.

"Homuhomu." Instead, Zaimokuza muttered a few nonsense words in agreement. "Indeed, even the greatest of novels would lie overlooked on a shelf were it poorly advertised."

That's what you got from my comment? No matter how much you advertise one of your terrible stories, only masochists are going to read it. Still, just telling him that he wasn't making any sense would be rude, so instead I just shrugged. "Well, somebody's bound to read a novel like that eventually, right? After that, it's all just word of mouth." When in doubt, go for vague encouragement!

"Hah! Well said, Hachiman-kun!" Zaimokuza cheered enthusiastically. Um, sure? If you say so? "You know, I've been thinking," he began, "after you become a hero, you will need a chronicler, will you not? A journalist, someone to catalogue and share your deeds to your adoring masses?"

I smiled sarcastically. "I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have do it than you," I told him. I mean, really, who else would be suitable? Not everybody had the same gift for creating incredibly implausible fiction as Zaimokuza Yoshiteru.

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 **This Year:**

I stole down the quiet, rubble-choked streets, my hands gripping tightly to the bags of groceries in my hands. A shadowy figure loomed on the street corner. Hulking. Twisted. Wrong. As I passed it, it inhaled deeply. I heard the wet snuffle, and despite the fact that I had done this before I still felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Like the civilian I was pretending to be, I just kept walking, never making eye contact with the beast in an over-large trench coat. One step. Another. After a subjective eternity - maybe half a block in real time - I exhaled in relief. As I passed the 'nicer' section of town and passed into the true ruins, my steps got faster.

As I passed under a bridge, outside of the view of cameras, I pulled down the scarf covering my face and vomited. Streams of silvery liquid splattered all over the ground, then slowly reconfigured themselves into a copy of myself - bags under my eyes, my hair too long, my wrists uncomfortably thin-looking where they peeked out of the heavy coat. It picked up a pair of the white trash bags that had been waiting for it under the bridge and left, appearing to all outside observers that there was nothing of any significance under this bridge at all.

I rested one hand against the wall and it parted like a curtain, creating a narrow passageway into darkness just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. Picking up the groceries, I stepped through, closing the wall behind me and leaving no trace of my passage.

After a long, dark corridor, the room beyond was surprisingly homey. It may have just been a disused basement, but with the addition of chairs, tables, lamps, and rugs it almost looked cozy. Of course, that was before I took in the red streamers and pink balloons, the construction paper hearts on the walls and the sounds of sappy romantic music playing from a radio somewhere. "What's all this?" I called out, an amused smile creeping its way onto my face. "Is there a reason we're celebrating Valentine's Day all of a sudden?"

A cheerful, sparkling-eyed figure jumped into the room, her arms wide open, displaying a sheaf of construction paper in one hand and some heavy-duty scissors in the other. "Tada!" Komachi shouted. "You're home early, onii-chan! The Nomu didn't give you any trouble, did they?"

I wasn't about to admit weakness in front of my sister. "Of course not. Do they ever?" I walked past her into the 'kitchen', unpacking bags of rice and cans of beans onto the mostly empty shelves. "I'd be astonished if they didn't just think I was Quirkless after they smelled me, let alone someone with a quirk strong enough to be a hero."

"Oh, Onii-chan." Komachi sighed. "You're so proud of being useless."

"Oi." My eyebrow twitched. "So? What's the occasion for all these decorations?"

"Stupid onii-chan, it's Valentine's Day, obviously!" Komachi said, pouting at me. "How could you forget the most important holiday of the year?"

"Most important?" I looked at her strangely. "Don't you think we have more important things to deal with right now than romance? In case you haven't noticed, the world is terrible right now."

Komachi sighed, placing her hands on her hips. "Honestly, onii-chan? Love is just about the most important thing there is in the world, you know. Obviously we have to celebrate!"

"If you say so," I muttered. I looked around the empty room, feeling sort of off-balance. "Uh, so… where's everybody else?" The radio kept playing, blaring out some sort of sappy tune, but I couldn't seem to make out the words. Where had I heard it before?

"What?" Komachi said obliviously, sitting down to cut out a construction paper heart, her scissors making snik snik snik noises as she worked. "Can't a little sister celebrate with her big brother alone?"

"Valentine's day?" I said in disbelief.

As I picked up another can of beans and put it on the shelf, I heard a soft noise, almost wet-sounding. "Is this better?" Yukinoshita Yukino asked. I looked up. Where my sister had been, still cutting valentines' hearts out of construction paper, was the long-haired cool beauty I had become so familiar with over the last few weeks at school. Her soaked combat uniform clung to her modest curves, the almost see-through fabric offering a tantalizing view. "You'd much rather spend Valentine's day with me, wouldn't you Ecchigaya?"

"Yukinoshita?" I gasped. Cold chills ran up the back of my spine. I felt paralyzed, somehow rooted to the spot.

Her skin rippled and melted, and her combat uniform shifted to something more like the typical UA uniform. As her hair slowly shifted from glossy black to a bluish silver, Kawasaki Saki raised an eyebrow. "Or maybe someone else?" She asked. "The new flame?"

Another organic squelch and the long blue hair became a frizzy light brown. "The old one?" Orimoto Kaori continued.

"The rich girl?" Yaoyorozu Momo asked, smiling at me the way she usually did during our Class President duties.

She stood up, unbuttoning her UA uniform with her left hand, and keeping the shining metal scissors in her right. As her shirt fell open, it revealed a tantalizing glimpse of white lace, and a long, flawless stretch of stomach. Yuigahama Yui smiled. "Or maybe her? After all, you saved her dog, didn't you? How could she possibly say no to a hero like you?"

"You're… you're her," I choked out. "You're the villain, the contractor."

At my accusation, her face began to peel, the skin sloughing off to reveal dirty blonde hair and a blushing, sharp-toothed smile. She let her disguise fail over her chest and hips as well, revealing the nakedness beneath, but rather than seeming embarrassed by it being on display just seemed to excite her more. I realized where I had heard the music before. It was the Theme Song quirk playing, not an ordinary radio. "Happy Valentine's Day, boyfriend!" She said with an eerie grin.

"All of them! Their blood! You-" Suddenly, I couldn't talk. My whole body seemed powerless. I looked down to see the heavy duty scissors sticking out of my lung, curiously painless, and the spreading pool of red liquid on the school tiles below me.

"Shouldn't you be more worried about yourself?" She asked hypothetically. Suddenly, her phone rang. "What's that, Kurogiri?" Her voice echoed strangely, sounding almost like it was underwater. "No, no, it's fine. It's not like he was a real hero, right?"

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 **The night before the Sports Festival:**

I woke up with a gasp, clutching my chest. My heart felt like it was beating at a thousand kilometers an hour, and my forehead was covered with cold sweat. Above me was the familiar ceiling of my bedroom. There was no light coming through the window, so it was still before dawn, and I slowly realized that it had all just been a dream.

I fumbled for my alarm clock, turning it to face me. Fourteen minutes past two in the morning. Definitely too early for me to be able to get away with not going back to sleep. With a groan, I swung my feet over the side of the bed and staggered into the kitchen. Maybe some warm milk would help?

"Onii-chan?" As I opened the cupboard to reach for a mug, Komachi's voice called out to me. I barely managed to restrain myself from slamming the cupboard and jumping three feet in the air.

I turned to face her. Luckily, instead of being in a UA school uniform, Komachi was bleary-eyed, mussy-haired, and wearing bear pajamas. "Jeez, make some noise when you walk!" I hissed.

She yawned. "Sorry onii-chan. Did you have bad dreams again?" I nodded. Turning away from her for a second, I reached into the fridge for some milk. "Was it the ooze guy again?"

I paused for a second as my fingers touched the handle of the milk jug. Surprisingly, no, it hadn't. Normally my nightmares either featured being slowly suffocated in the ooze villain's body, or watching helplessly as my hands dissolved into piles of green protoplasm, but for some reason tonight had been different. Was it because I had gone to sleep normally in order to rest up for the sports festival instead of using ooze to access a stockpile of Kawasaki's sleep quirk? It figured. I finally figured out a way to stop having the same nightmares almost every night, and the end result was that I just had different nightmares instead. "Not this time," I eventually answered Komachi. "Just ordinary performance anxiety dreams."

"Sounded pretty bad for one of those," Komachi muttered skeptically.

"Sorry," I muttered. I put the mug of milk in the microwave and hit the appropriate buttons. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

Suddenly, a pair of incredibly strong arms wrapped themselves around my ribs, squeezing me with a careful gentleness that belied the incredible power they contained. My quirk flared to life the way it always did, reassuring me that the Komachi hugging me was indeed my adorable little sister, and not some imposter. "You'll be fine, onii-chan," she murmured into my T-shirt. "And even if you mess up and look like a total doofus on live television I promise I'll still be proud of you."

An exasperated smile found its way to my lips. "Thanks, Komachi. If I wind up looking like a doofus on live television I'm sure I'll find that comforting." I twisted slightly in her grip so that I could ruffle her hair with one hand.

"You look like a doofus anyway," Komachi said, still clinging to my back like a limpet. "So even if you do wind up looking like a total doofus, probably nobody will even notice a difference."

I sighed. "So, so comforting." I twisted a little bit more, and used the hand that had been messing with her hair to push her off of me. "Go back to bed, Komachi," I told her. "I'll try to keep the noise down."

"It's not your fault," she said with a yawn, "I left my door open for Kamakura. G'night onii-chan."

"Good night, Komachi." The door to her room, padded to keep out a little bit more noise from the rest of the house, closed with its usual heavy thud. I just stood there for a while in the dark kitchen, sipping on warm milk and letting my racing heart settle down. Sure enough as the adrenaline passed, exhaustion finally caught back up to me.

As I started heading back to my room, a glimpse of paper on the dining room table caught my eye. I took another look at the list of tips UA had prepared for students participating in the Sports Festival. Eat a large meal heavy in carbohydrates before the night of the match, it read. Avoid strenuous exercise the day before. Avoid the use of metabolic quirks. Get a good night's sleep.

"Dammit, UA," I muttered under my breath. "Give advice that's less mutually exclusive next time."


	20. Honestly, Riajuu Should Just Go Explode

A/N: Some slight changes were made from the canon omake "Once Again, Hikigaya Hachiman is Ahead of Me" to adjust for the fact that certain people wouldn't have been in the stands at that time. That omake will now be considered semi-canon.

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What was it about Hikigaya Hachiman that made other people rely on him so much? His team pushed him to take their single spot in the finals. He effortlessly took charge back at the USJ. Even as early as the class president election, it seemed like people were already following his lead.

It should have been me.

Hayama Hayato doesn't lose, right? Turns out, yeah, I do. Why was it someone else who got to be Class President, and not me? Despite the fact I took the initiative and had a decent speech on the actual day of the election, despite the fact I had a solid base of people who I thought would vote for me, Hikigaya had started convincing people he was smart from the very first day. Even if you're the fastest guy in the race, if someone else is already halfway to the finish line, you'll still lose.

It wouldn't be so bad if Hikigaya was just _better_ than me. I could handle that. But it was dumb luck he was born with a power copy quirk, dumb luck he happened to be able to explain something impressive right off the bat, dumb luck that the teacher decided to push him into running for class president, dumb luck that he happened to bump into that villain and almost catch her, dumb luck that he was just a little bit later to get his headbands stolen than I was.

Dumb luck that he got put into Yukino's HEART group, and not me.

I could easily have resented him for it. Really easily. But, it wasn't like Hikigaya was a bad guy. He was polite almost to a fault, he worked hard, he was smart, and he had more raw courage than … just about anyone I'd ever met. And honestly, Yukino making friends with anybody was a positive step, even if it wasn't me.

So I had a few options. I could feel jealous, and also feel guilty at feeling jealous because I liked the guy; I could try to convince myself that he wasn't really as great as all that so I could stop feeling guilty, or I could do things the Hayama Way, as according to my father: instead of feeling jealous of what other people have, figure out how to copy them so you can get the same results. And then do better.

So. What was it that made Hikigaya Hachiman special? It would be easy to point to his quirk, or his physical fitness, or the way that he always seemed to have a plan for everything… but Hikigaya hadn't really stepped up his game until after the USJ. Hikigaya Hachiman had changed after he touched that Nomu.

Unlike the rest of us, Hikigaya Hachiman had a cause.

I'd thought I'd had one, once.

I sighed heavily as Hikigaya Hachiman left the stadium, preparing for his first match. Of course. Even a quirk that could do anything couldn't help someone figure out how to talk to Yukinoshita Yukino.

Luckily for him, Hikigaya had people willing to cover up his mistakes. "Ne, ne, Yukinon, you're up next after Hikki, right?" I couldn't help but look over to my right at Yuigahama Yui. All I could see from this angle was her orange hair, but her voice was cheerful. "You should go down and join him in the waiting room," she said, "I'm sure he'd probably like the company!"

Yukino hesitantly looked between the stage below, Yuigahama, and the doorway out of the seats. "I - I wouldn't want to make him uncomfortable…"

Yuigahama sighed. "Yukinon, you already apologized to me and Shoji-kun and Tohru-chan. Won't you feel bad if you don't go and say sorry to Hikki before your match?"

"I… I suppose you're right," Yukino said. Her usually icy blue eyes looked troubled. It was rare, seeing her that way. Usually she put on a mask of frigid indifference, no matter who demanded that she apologize, or how much peer pressure a group put on her to admit her 'sins'. Why did she look like she actually felt guilty this time? It was all a competition, wasn't it? "Yui-chan… do you want to come with me?"

"Oh-" It sounded like Yuigahama was about to agree, and then she cut herself off. "Nnn, I don't think I should. Bakubaku would be mad if none of us watched him fight."

Honestly, I wasn't sure that Bakugo would even notice, but it was nice of Yuigahama to give the two of them the space to talk without an audience.

Unfortunately, then things started snowballing. "I'll go with you, Yukinoshita-san." Yaoyorozu Momo said, pressing one hand to her chest. "I couldn't find a chance to say anything, either."

"Me too!" Hagakure chimed in. "I mean, I don't really have anything to say, but you guys are gonna keep him company, right?"

"Ooh, count me in!" Denki said. "I mean, he said no hard feelings, but like, I still feel bad, you know?"

I ground my teeth. Damn it, if any of you idiots had any idea how hard something like this was for Yukino… I wanted to speak up and say something, but I knew that if I did, there was no way it would end well. Every time I had jumped to her defense in the past, all it had done was alienate her further from the rest of the girls in the classroom, gotten her accusations of 'monopolizing Hayama' or something equally idiotic.

Luckily, I wasn't the only person in the classroom with more than the bare minimum of common sense. "I know you _just_ got done frying all your brain cells again, but you could try being less of an idiot, Denki" Yumiko said with a flick of her long blonde hair. "Too many people would just distract Hikigaya. Besides, Bakugo's finishing up. There's no time for a big crowd of well-wishers."

"Indeed," Iida said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose reflexively. "If you're going to go, you had better do it now."

Together, Yukino and Yaoyorozu left. Denki of course stayed behind, while Hagakure wavered indecisively for a second before she sagged back into her chair, dejected. Not quite the ideal scenario, but if anyone was going to go with Yukino, Yaoyorozu was a decent choice. And there was a little part of me that was glad Yukino wouldn't be alone with Hikigaya - not that I had any right to monopolize her, or that I thought anything would happen inside of a few minutes, but it was there regardless.

"You should think about getting ready for your match too, Mina-chan," Jiro said as Kirishima got pushed further and further onto the back foot against Bakugo's blasts. One of her earlobes was still extended out to the outer wall of the stadium, but either they weren't talking to each other at the moment or she had gotten tired of narrating the voiceover. "I don't know who's gonna win out of Monoma or Hikigaya, but either way I bet the match is gonna go quick."

Mina nodded distractedly, her black-scleraed eyes never leaving the field of competition. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll go after the match is over."

"Oh, that's right!" Jiro said, a sly, teasing hint to her voice and mirth dancing in her angular eyes. "You've got to cheer on... both of the people in your cavalry team, right?"

Warily, Ashido's eyes flickered over to Jiro. "Uh huh, yep!"

Jiro leaned in a little closer to Ashido. "And you're rooting for…" she paused significantly. "Both of them totally equally, right?"

"Ah hah hah, well… yes?" Ashido said. A drop of sweat appeared on her forehead, and I briefly wondered if it was acidic.

"Hey, Mina-chan… you know my headphone jack quirk lets me hear peoples' heartbeats change when they lie, right?"

"Huh?!" Ashido shouted in poorly hidden panic. "I mean, I, uh, no, I didn't?"

Jiro smiled like the cat who caught the canary - and then, instead of leaning in for the kill, sat back in her seat with a smirk. "Well, there's no way I could hear anything like that over the noise all the explosions going on down there. Just thought I'd mention it. For no particular reason."

"Mou, leave me alone!" Ashido pouted grumpily. "I have a match coming up you know!"

"Sorry, sorry." Jiro said, a little embarrassed. "I'll be good, I swear. Just thought I would help you loosen up a little. Want me to come wait with you before your match?" Left unsaid was the obvious: Ashido had about as much chance against Yukino as Kirishima did against Bakugo. She had good reason to be tense.

"... After this one ends," Ashido said. She pouted a little more, sinking her chin down into one palm as she braced her elbow with her knee. "I don't wanna share a room with Yukinoshita, and the other one's gonna be all full of 1-B." Then she stopped, gasping in astonishment and sitting up straight. "No, wait! You can't! If you come with me, who'll tell everybody what the people on stage are saying? I need you here so you can tell everybody all the sick burns I've been thinking of saying to Yukinoshita!"

Jiro groaned in exasperation. "Mina… I keep telling you, witty banter isn't actually a prerequisite for being a hero."

"Hmph," Ashido pouted. "Shows what you know."

Suddenly, the two-toned figure of Todoroki Shoto appeared at the top of the stairs. All of the conversations going on in the stands ground to a halt. Todoroki looked left and right for a few seconds to examine the seats, then started walking, heading to the far upper corner away from everyone else.

"Hey!" Yumiko shouted, breaking the silence. "Is Tsuyu-chan alright?"

Todoroki's steps paused. "... yeah."

"You didn't have to go that hard on her, you know!" Yumiko continued.

Unlike Yukino, I didn't really know Todoroki Shoto very well. I'd run into him at some of Yukino's family gatherings once or twice, but he'd always been standoffish, withdrawn. All I really knew about him was that Endeavor, his dad, was proud of him - and that Yukino was worried about him.

"I…" Todoroki started to say, before he shook his head. He continued to his seat in silence.

"Man, what the heck was that?" Tobe muttered quietly. He was leaning forward, his dyed brown long hair screening off my view of his face, but I doubted it was making a pleasant expression. "He could at least say something, y'know?"

I cleared my throat. "Well, not everybody likes talking." I was tempted to add the words 'as much as you,' but even if I was going to stick up for Todoroki that didn't mean I had to be rude about it. "So, Hikigaya and Monoma. Who do you think will win?"

"It's gotta be the Pres, right?" Tobe said excitedly, turning to face me with a wide smile. "I mean, like, sure, Monoma's pretty tough, but he was only such a problem to deal with because Todoroki has a super powerful quirk and let it get stolen like an idiot. I don't think Hikitaicho said anybody in 1-B was on that level, right?"

"I'm not sure that's true, Tobe-san." Surprisingly, it was Midoriya who spoke up. He never paused in his fierce observation of the match as Bakugo pushed Kirishima further and further towards the edge of the stage, leaving me nothing but a bushy head of curly green hair to stare at from behind. "I'd like to see Hikigaya-san win, of course, but even if he can overcharge his quirks he can't make them work at anything like full power. Trying to compete with full powered quirks when you don't have one is… rough." Oh, right. Midoriya had been 'quirkless' for most of his childhood, hadn't he? "On the other hand, Hikigaya is a pretty quick thinker on his feet and he has a lot of tactical versatility which means that he's pretty unpredictable but on the other hand he probably won't be able to know what quirks monoma has copied until he uses them so there's a disadvantage there but knowing hikigaya he probably has a plan for how to handle most of what monoma has ready but what if he already burnt out quirks he needs or…" As his voice trailed off, I couldn't help but frown. Hikigaya was one thing, and I understood Yaoyorozu, but how had _Midoriya_ been in third place for the class representative position?

As I was pondering that question, Bakugo made a spiraling dive towards Kirishima which ended in a huge KRAKOOM, sending the red-haired student flying backwards out of the ring. "Kirishima Eijiro is out of bounds!" Midnight's voice suddenly echoed around the auditorium. "Winner! Bakugo Katsuki!"

I brought my attention back to Tobe, Midoriya, and the original question I had asked. "Well, I bet we're about to find out," I couldn't help but reply.

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A few minutes later, Bakugo Katsuki came sprinting up into the stands, just barely in time for Hikigaya's match. "Heh, made it," he said smugly.

"Oi, oi, wait for me!" Kirishima's came echoing up the hallway. I almost laughed as he came into view - his spiky red hair and his face were still blackened with soot.

Bakugo dropped himself down in the seat next to Yuigahama, one of his usual scowls replacing his temporary smug grin. "Shut up! You're slow!"

"I'm not slow! You're just! Stupid fast!" Kirishima panted, skidding to a halt next to Bakugo and bending down to brace his hands on his knees while he sucked in air. "I'll get faster! For next time!"

"Heh." Bakugo smirked. "Don't slack off on your other training, now. Cause I'm gonna be training my blasts until I can blow right through that skin of yours." He rolled his narrow red eyes and crossed his arms in displeasure. "Hmph, can't believe you actually made me go for the ring out."

Yuigahama leaned forward, offering a handkerchief to Kirishima. "Great job, both of you! It was a really impressive match!"

"Oh, uh, thanks," Kirishima said as he tried to wipe the soot off his face. Nobly, he deliberately tilted his chin back to avoid taking advantage of the view that Yuigahama's lean forward offered him.

"You sure got back up here fast," Yuigahama said, "didn't you stop at Recovery Girl's office?"

"What for?" Bakugo asked truculently. "Kirishima never even touched me." Although he put on a brave front, I noticed a tremor in his crossed arms. "Besides, like hell I'm missing this match."

Kirishima winced as he took a seat, but he waved away Yuigahama's look of concern. "I'm fine! I can go see the nurse whenever. This much is nothing."

Yuigahama sighed. "Honestly, you two… there's a monitor in Recovery Girl's office, you know."

Idly, I turned my attention away from the three of them and towards the ring, where Monoma and Hikigaya were already standing face to face. I could have watched it on the monitors, of course, but like most people with flight quirks I had better than 20/20 vision. There was just something more satisfying about watching the scene with my own two eyes, even if it was harder to see.

Of course, it did come with its own hazards. I had to tear my eyes away from Midnight as the act of raising her arm to signal the start of the battle set various other parts of her body in motion, hurriedly refocusing on the two contestants before I missed anything.

"Start!" Midnight shouted.

Even with my eagle eyes, I almost missed it - the very first move of the match, Monoma did something to the ground to turn it into quicksand. I shook my head in disbelief. "I would have lost, right there," I couldn't help but mutter.

"Eh?" Yumiko made a sound of surprise. "Wait, I don't get it. Aren't you a better flier than Hikigaya? He flew out of that trap just fine."

"I need to jump to take off," I said dejectedly as I watched Hikigaya effortlessly levitate over the tarpit. "He doesn't."

"Heh." Tobe let out a dry laugh. "Maybe it's a good thing Todoroki fucked up, then. At least we're not getting shown up on stage."

"This looks bad, you guys!" Denki shouted. Monoma was closing in on Hikigaya with his hands now the size of his whole body, but something told me it wasn't time to worry just yet.

"It wasn't Todoroki's fault," I replied to Tobe with a sigh as Hikigaya avoided being pummeled by turning his body to mist and letting Monoma grab his clothes instead of his torso. I paused for a second to avoid talking over Present Mic's narration, then continued. "It was mine. If I had just flown out of range of everybody from 1-B once things started getting heated, we would have been fine."

"You sure do like taking cheap shots, huh Hikigaya?" Jiro loudly copied Monoma's dialogue, as if trying to draw attention back to the match instead of the current line of discussion.

Miura shook her head. "That's not true, Hayama! You were counting on us to have your back! If we'd seen a little sooner, we could have gotten you out of those vines - "

"I mean, we all made mistakes," Tobe said, still keeping his tone of voice lighthearted even as he occasionally glanced in Todoroki's direction, "but at least we were all sticking to the plan and doing our best. Unlike some people who were just _half_ -assing it."

I was saved from having to respond by a wave of vines that erupted from Monoma's skull, expanding in all directions to attempt to enshroud Hikigaya. I couldn't help but wince at the carbon copy of the move that had ended my participation in the Sports Festival. If I had been going fast enough, I _might_ have been able to escape that attack back during the cavalry battle, but once the girl from 1-B had killed my momentum, she had rendered me pretty much helpless.

Naturally, the same wasn't true for Hikigaya. Even from this far away, I could see his hands grow until his palms were as big as dinner plates, and as he shoved them forward in a double palm strike they erupted in a burst of heat, light, and pressure. The giant mass of onrushing vines was blown back like a weeping willow in a high wind, and Monoma himself was knocked off of his feet, the blow hitting him hard enough that he was forced to dig into the concrete with vines to avoid being sent out of bounds. My eyes widened. Where the hell had Hikigaya been hiding that particular combo?

Present Mic said something excited-sounding, but it was completely drowned out by Bakugo's enthusiastic shout. "Yeah! Rip that extra apart!" Bakugo yelled, pumping his fist in the air. I stared at him in mild amusement, as did most of the rest of the class, which had him turning ever so slightly red with embarrassment. "What the fuck are you looking at?" Huh. For all that Bakugo gave off the impression of being a total violent misanthrope, he did have a friendly side to him after all, didn't he?

"Personally, I could have done with a little bit less enthusiasm from that team," Hagakure said to Tobe in the silence created in the wake of Bakugo's shout. I'd almost overlooked that she was sitting so close to our group, "I mean, we would have gotten our headbands back if Yukinoshita hadn't bent the heck out of the rules and kicked Hikigaya in the stomach."

"Ah! That's my quirk!" Kaminari shouted in excitement as Hikigaya lunged forward before Monoma could reclaim his balance and electrified a vine, shocking Monoma.

"Nobody cares!" Bakugo shouted back.

"She did apologize to us," Shoji said to Hagakure, "do you really need to hold a grudge over it?"

"No…" Hagakure said reluctantly, "I guess not? Maybe? I don't know. She - ah!"

The sunlight reflected brilliantly off of Monoma's steely bald head as he executed a perfect shoulder throw straight out of a judo textbook. Hikigaya landed hard, hitting the hard concrete in a way that had me wincing. Then Monoma added insult to injury, softening the ground to mud and shoving Hikigaya's head under it.

"What a vicious combo from Monoma!" Present Mic shouted. My undivided attention, like everyone else's, was now riveted to the drama taking place below. "The power copier of 1-B is pulling no punches here, folks! This may be the end for Hikigaya!"

No. It wasn't. I could see it in the tension in Hikigaya's grasping hand, the only part of his body still above ground. I took a second to check Midnight, and sure enough, she was watching it as well; after a second, the monitors zoomed in on the hand to show the audience what we were seeing. The fingers under tension, grasping at the air in almost a claw. A hand that was still fighting. Then, all of a sudden, they spread wide into a fan, almost in panic. Midnight's hand slowly raised, preparing to call the match.

I almost missed the moment when Hikigaya clenched those fingers into a fist. A shadow erupted from the ground, Hikigaya seemingly merged with it, and the fight was back on. The stadium erupted in yells and cheers. For a few minutes, nobody was in any mood to chitchat or snipe at each other, all of us wholly absorbed in the fight. Hikigaya's burst of gigantic strength, saving him from a pin and once again forcing Monoma to grab the concrete in order to stay in the ring. Monoma's last stand, and the unnerving claim that there were no limits on his copied abilities. And finally Hikigaya's last second cheap shot, catching Monoma off-guard with a quirk he had already fallen for once before.

It was hard not to be jealous of someone, I mused, when figuring out how to copy and surpass them was literally impossible. Compared to the incredible versatility of his quirk, the simple flight power I had been praised for all my life seemed rigid and inflexible. What's more, Hikigaya's victory galvanized the class in a way that none of the other fights had. Maybe it was the fact that he was squared up against someone from 1-B instead of a classmate, maybe it was the fact that he was using quirks from our class, or simply the fact that he was the Class President. Somehow, his victory felt like a victory for all of us.

That sentiment of mutual triumph carried the class forwards in a friendly ambiance. People pleasantly bid Tokoyami farewell, we collectively ignored 1-B as they all filed back into their section in ignominious defeat; it was a good feeling, and it lasted right up until Present Mic started announcing the next match. "For the seventh round of the tournaMENt -" suddenly, he stopped, coughing a few times.

"Uhm… it seems that Present Mic overexerted his voice in the last match…" Eraserhead's voice droned. "So, I guess I have to announce this one while he gets a glass of water." The microphone picked up a heavy sigh, causing the audience to break into laughter. "Uhm… both from the hero course, on the left… Ashido Mina, on the right, Yukinoshita Yukino…"

"Oi," Mic's voice rasped. "Come on, you can do better than that!" Again, laughter echoed through the stadium.

Hagakure's sleeves bent and folded over each other on the back of the empty seat in front of her, giving the impression that she was leaning forward and resting her chin on her folded arms. "It's not like I'm still mad at Yukinoshita, exactly, not for wanting to get into the tournament anyway? It's just, she kicked Hikigaya right in the stomach. Like, that's pretty much against the rules, you know? And the refs didn't even call her on it, and I can't help but wonder if it's because her team had people related to two famous pros on it, and ours didn't."

As the _gluk gluk gluk_ sound of water being noisily swallowed echoed over the stadium speakers, Eraserhead sighed again. "Ashido's quirk lets her create acids from her skin, while Yukinoshita's lets her convert ambient heat into kinetic energy." As if fearing further interruption, Eraserhead hurriedly added, "Match seven, start."

"I'm sure that isn't the case, Hagakure-san!" Iida shouted defensively. I winced. I agreed with Iida, actually, but given who was speaking...

"You would be," Hagakure muttered.

"Let's just watch the match," I did my best to interrupt the argument before it could get heated, keeping my eyes peeled as I focused on the stage.

Ashido was a natural acrobat, and her Acid quirk provided her a combination of additional mobility and offense that was pretty tough to beat. She did her best to slide in and out of close combat range with Yukino, throwing heavy globs of acid whenever she got close enough.

"Heh!" Jiro loyally narrated, her fingers tensed up into fists. "This is gonna be easy! Sorry, Yuki-chan, but you're gonna wind up with your clothes frozen to you again today, too! Don't worry, though, I'll keep the acid mild!" Jiro paused and rolled her eyes. "Really Ashido? That's the witty line I had to stay up here for? Honestly…"

If Ashido moved around the ring like she was on roller skates, then Yukino moved like she was skating on ice. A wide arc of acid sprayed from one of Ashido's swinging arms, and Yukino faded back a few feet before curving backwards and sideways, bursts of kinetic force from her feet causing her to hover over the cement of the stage.

"Sorry, Ashido-san." Again, Jiro was narrating, but my eyes were focused on Yukino's face. My hands convulsed around the armrests as I saw it. Her eyes… I hated those eyes of hers. Cold, haughty, and desperately, ineffably sad. Her mouth moved, and I almost knew what she was going to say even before Jiro repeated it. "I'm afraid I can't afford to keep holding back."

Ashido's acid sizzled momentarily where it hit the ground, then started to slowly crystallize as more and more of the ambient heat in the arena started getting sucked into Yukino's body. She might not have realized it, but Ashido's skating arcs into the frosty air surrounding Yukinoshita got shallower and shallower, the pain caused by entering the frigid cold making her instinctively shy away. To compensate, Ashido started making her acid sprays more and more concentrated, relying on the heat caused by the chemical reactions to keep her attacks liquid.

"You know what, Yuki-chan?" Jiro narrated for Ashido. "Me neither!"

"Uh… apparently Mic would like me to mention that the battle is heating up even while the arena cools down," Eraserhead announced in exasperation. "Well, corny jokes aside, if you look closely you can see that both contestants are competing for an advantage in agility."

"Hey, is this really okay?" Yuigahama asked, one hand coming up to her mouth so that she could bite a nervous knuckle, "that acid looks like it could hurt somebody."

"Pretty sure you don't need to worry about Ice Queen," Bakugo scoffed.

Kirishima nodded in agreement. "Yeah! Don't worry, Yuigahama-chan, Ashido knows what she's doing! She won't aim for anywhere Recovery Girl can't fix!"

"Heh." Bakugo scoffed, glaring at Kirishima. "Not what I meant, Spiky Hair."

As splash after splash of acid peppered the pavement between Yukino and Ashido, the safe terrain for Yukino got scarcer and scarcer. Slowly but surely, Ashido used lines of sizzling acid to push Yukino slowly back towards the edge of the arena, hoping to force her to either get hit by the acid or dodge out of the ring.

"I think you're right, Ka-" Midoriya froze for a second at Bakugo's sudden evil glare. "-tsuki!" he finished with a yelp. "I-I-I mean, it might sort of look like Ashido-san has the advantage just going by their positions, but just look at the stage! The whole right half of the concrete is covered in frost! It must be like the middle of winter where Ashido-san is!"

As if in response to Midoriya's words, the acidic gel that Ashido was skating on froze under her feet. As the gooey substance crystallized and lost its slipperiness, Ashido stumbled.

"Heh. You bet I'm right, you useless nerd!" Bakugo crowed. "Eat shit and die, Raccoon Eyes!"

Yukino wasn't the type to let an opening pass her by. She darted forward - only to see too late that Ashido made a last minute attack as she was falling, and that she was charging straight into a spray of acid. She put up her arms in front of her face to defend herself, but the thin layer of fabric sleeve that the gym uniform provided was no match for Ashido's acid. I was sure that Yukino had tried to freeze as much of the acid as she could, but from the look of pain on her face I could tell that at least some had gotten through.

But not enough to stop her. With a swift movement, Yukino reached out, slapping Ashido's bicep in a move that looked like it shouldn't have done any damage. Ashido went tumbling away from Yukino like she had been hit by a sledgehammer. She crumpled to the ground in a heap, then half sat up, clutching her arm in a way suggesting that it was broken. By the time she was able to recover enough to search for Yukino, however, Yukino had already skated behind her in a blur, one hand swinging for the back of Ashido's neck - and stopping, hovering just centimeters away from skin contact.

"Winner!" Midnight shouted. I released a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Yukinoshita Yukino!"

"Wow, Midoriya!" Tobe shouted good-naturedly. "Your mouth is as dangerous as mine is!"

Midoriya turned red, one hand scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "Ah ha ha no I mean I just got lucky and happened to say something at the right time your quirk is way more impressive actually I've been kind of wondering how does it work do you like have to look at stuff you're affecting and does it still work if you say stuff in english stuff like that"

Uraraka surreptitiously elbowed Midoriya in the arm. "Pssst! Deku!" Honestly, she was such a sweet girl. I had to admit to myself, getting rejected by her during team selection had stung. Only out of a competitive sense, of course, nothing romantic - but seeing their casual display of friendship I couldn't help but feel another sting of envy.

Midoriya slapped a hand over his mouth and took a deep breath with a grateful look at Uraraka, then released it. "Uh, um, maybe if you have time later I could talk to you about it?" He asked Tobe.

"Hah, yeah, sure thing man! But you gotta tell me more about your quirk too, alright?" Tobe said.

"It's good to see you two are still so chummy even though you're up against each other in the quarterfinals," Miura said to Midoriya and Uraraka. The two of them looked at each other sidelong, and sort of scooched slightly away from each other as the realization they would be fighting soon kicked in. "It'd be good if everybody in this class acted like that," she added with an accusatory glare at Todoroki.

"I know, right?" Hagakure agreed. "I mean, did Yukinoshita really have to go that far?"

Todoroki's head jerked up from his previous impassive position, and he scowled at Hagakure, the inflexible scar tissue around his left eye making the expression look ever so slightly lopsided. He wasn't the only one to take some offense at that statement, because I had to bite my tongue to keep from lashing out at Hagakure. "She did just get burned by acid right before," I said, doing my best to keep a reasonable tone to my voice. "And Ashido aimed that acid right at Yukinoshita's face. They were both fighting hard."

"I know, but -" she broke off. It was hard to judge her, not being able to see her face, but the discontent she obviously felt wasn't hard to hear in her voice at all. "I don't like it, you know? It's like, she can kick Hikigaya in the stomach or break Ashido's arm, and as long as she apologizes for it later, it's fine, right? She was 'under a lot of pressure'. Well, I'm under a lot of pressure too, but you don't see me poking anybody in the eyes or punching them when the refs can't see or anything."

"Nobody sees you do anything, Hagakure," Denki teased, trying to break the tension.

Hagakure twisted around, presumably looking straight at Denki. "Oh don't even get me started with you. 'We're cool, right?' is not an apology!"

"Whoa, hey, hold on, what?" Denki said, startled. "I mean, jeez, is it really that big a deal?"

"I dunno, Kaminari, is it?" Hagakure asked sarcastically. "Because it's really starting to seem like as soon as it's time to explain why you zapped us in the back, or why Yukinoshita gets to kick people when it's against the rules and a jerk move even if it wasn't, or when Todoroki screws up and hurts Tsuyu, that it's understandable because everybody's under so much pressure and everything is such a big deal, but as soon as it comes time for any of you to apologize for any of it, suddenly it's no big deal and we're all just friends!"

"U-um, Hagakure -" Midoriya tried to interrupt, but Tobe talked over him.

"Oh, man!" Tobe chimed in. "You mean like how it's supposed to be okay that Todoroki didn't burn Hayama out of those vines or use fire to stop Monoma from melting anybody free, because he has some kind of reason that we're not supposed to ask about, but it's also okay for him to stab your team in the back in order to get to the finals because they're so important, even though he can probably get an internship from the number two pro hero whenever he wants?"

I sucked in air through my teeth as Todoroki's face darkened. "Come on, Tobe," I said with a forced light tone to my voice, "you don't need to go that far." I looked over to Iida, hoping for him to chime in in agreement. Typically, he was such a stalwart rule-follower that I was surprised he hadn't said anything already. But either because of his new found 'friendship' with Tobe, due to Hagakure's accusations of privilege, or maybe just because he didn't approve of Todoroki's actions either, he stayed silent.

"Just like that, Tobe!" Hagakure chirped cheerfully, ignoring my attempts at peacemaking. "So Kaminari, is it a big deal? You tell me."

"I think you're misunderstanding something." Todoroki's voice was clear, but the expression on his face was anything but. With a stormy glare, his blue left eye burning fiercely against the dark background of his scar, he folded his arms in front of him defensively. "First," he said coldly, "Kaminari, Yaoyorozu, and Yukinoshita acted on my orders. And second? The only reason I even participated in Hikigaya's plan from the beginning was because it was convenient. I was never considering any of you as friends in the first place."

The silence that enveloped the stands was as frigid as Todoroki's ice. For all that Tobe and Hagakure's complaints had been rude and accusatory, when Todoroki bald-facedly admitted that he had, in fact, been taking advantage of the rest of us to move forward in the competition it left most of us with no room to respond.

Most of us. "Heh," Bakugo scoffed. "If this is how you treat your enemies, it's a good thing we didn't need you for anything important back at the USJ."

"I mean, it's not like we did anything important either, Bakugo" Kirishima said in confusion. "All we did was fight a bunch of gangsters. I mean, sure, there were a lot of them, but All Might and Eraser-sensei fought all the real villains."

"Shut up, I know!" Bakugo snapped. "That's not my point! My point is, Half and Half keeps half-assing shit! Sure, today he managed to get into the finals because Hikigaya's team was there for him to ambush, but what if instead of Copycat and Wavy Hair he was up against villains? What if the League had been there for us, instead of All Might?" Bakugo stood up out of his chair, turning to fully face Todoroki. "How much training are you doing with your left, Two-face? Push comes to shove and you actually need fire for something, are you gonna be able to handle it? Or are you just gonna let someone die?"

Todoroki stood up too. I wanted to say something, to try to defuse the situation, but the air around the two of them was so intense that it was hard to imagine what I could possibly say. "I don't need to use fire," Todoroki forced out through gritted teeth, "and I'm going to prove it. I'm going to win this whole festival with just my right."

"Like hell!" Bakugo shouted back. "You think you can beat me one-handed? Fuck!"

"Really, Todoroki?" Miura added with a frown, "I mean, I could have maybe understood it if you were saving it for the finals or something, but just not using half your quirk at all? I don't get it."

"You don't have to," Todoroki said coldly. "It's none of your business."

Bakugo took a step towards the end of the row, as if to charge up and physically assault Todoroki for his attitude, but Uraraka and Midoriya were between him and the far staircase. As he saw them, he stopped in his tracks. "Heh. Heh heh." He started laughing, a low, dark sound, and he turned on his heel and went to sit back down. "You stupid fuck. I don't even need to deal with you myself! You keep fucking around like this, and you'll be lucky to even make it to the finals."

All things considered, it wasn't surprising that Todoroki stormed out of the stands.

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

Gaaaah, why did I raise my fist into the air like that at the end? I probably looked like a complete idiot! It was a sports festival, not a boxing match! Well, at least the fight itself had been impressive... probably? At the end of the day, I had won a broadcasted competition match against a real, bonafide hero student, and only I knew just how much of a flimsy, unsustainable lie that victory was based on.

Slowly but surely, as I limped back inside and headed for Recovery Girl's office, the haze of endorphins faded from my system and I started to realize just how incredibly sore my body was. Monoma had gotten me with not one but two Big Hand-assisted slaps, once to knock me out of my fusion with Dark Shadow and again to pin me to the ground. As an expert on being hit by speeding cars, I could comfortably state that being slapped by a giant super-strong hand only hurt less than that because the area of impact was more spread out. My entire back felt like one massive bruise, and I was honestly surprised the damage wasn't worse.

But the physical aches and pains were nothing compared to the sheer mental anguish I felt when I tallied up just how many hours of quirk storage I had spent in a single fight. Eighty-three hours of work, gone. Just like that. Even stockpiling for six hours a night, I would be paying for this fight for the next two weeks.

Luckily, before that awful realization could fully set in, my misery was interrupted by the sight of Yaoyorozu Momo and Yukinoshita Yukino walking together towards me.

"They're going to stop giving you replacement shirts at this rate, Hikigaya," Yukinoshita greeted me. Despite the fact that it was a little bit cool in the shady tunnels under the stadium she wore her own gym uniform unzipped, showing off the white undershirt beneath. It would have been a tantalizing view if I hadn't been in so much pain.

"Very funny, Yukinoshita," I said through gritted teeth. "No, really. I'd laugh, but I think Monoma cracked a few of my ribs."

"Oh no!" Yaoyorozu exclaimed, rushing a few steps forward towards me, her ponytail bouncing, before stopping just short. She stretched one hand towards my chest, but stopped before she could reach, as though nervous to touch somewhere that could cause me pain. "Is there anything I can do? Do you need any help getting to the first aid station?"

Well, now I feel bad. I was just exaggerating for comic effect. I shook my head, wincing as the movement pulled at muscles in my spine. "I'll be fine," I said, "it's not far."

"If you're sure…" Yaoyorozu said uncertainly. "I'd better come with you, just in case. Good luck on your match, Yukinoshita-chan!"

As Yaoyorozu turned over her shoulder to look back at Yukinoshita, my attention naturally followed. Surprisingly, there was a look of concern in her clear blue eyes, and maybe even a little bit of guilt. Oi, don't tell me you actually fell for my guilt trip! "Seriously, I'm fine," I said, forcing a smile. "I heal fast, remember? I'm only going to Recovery Girl in the first place because her quirk doesn't hurt like a bitch when I use it."

"For the seventh round of the tournaMENt-" Present Mic's voice cut off with a squawk and some coughing, but it was still a clear sign that I was holding Yukinoshita up.

I forced a smile, turning my palms face out to substitute for moving my shoulders to shrug. "Good luck on your match," I said.

Yukinoshita hesitated for a second, as if trying to figure out something to say, but as Eraserhead took over the announcer duties she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again as cold as ice, all hints of compassion gone. She started walking again, first at a brisk clip, then breaking into a jog as Eraserhead skipped right to her name. Her long black hair and unzipped jacket shirt billowed elegantly behind her, and a cold wind blew from the corridor behind me, as if to punish me for my lack of shirt. Carried on it, I faintly heard her reply, as trite and superficial as my own encouragement had been. "Good job on yours."

For a few seconds, Yaoyorozu and I didn't speak as we walked - well, she walked, I more like trudged - towards Recovery Girl's office. The silence grew, became more and more awkward, until finally we broke it simultaneously.

"I'm sorry / Hikigaya-kun, I wanted to apologize."

My head jerked to look at Yaoyorozu, and I instantly regretted it. "Wait, what?" I asked.

Her expressive eyebrows scrunched together as she frowned. "Yukinoshita-chan and I had intended to come down and apologize to you before your match, but we ran into her older sister, and, well…"

"Her sister, huh?" You mean she wasn't just carved wholesale out of a glacier? "Wait, do they even let family members backstage?" I asked.

"Apparently they do if those family members are Pro Heroes," Yaoyorozu said.

Idly, I pictured stopping by UA after graduation, sneaking backstage so that I could cheer Komachi on. Yeah, I could see myself doing that. Of course, I would probably have to convince them that I was a real hero first, and not some creepy stalker who put on a fake costume to sneak in…. "Anyway," I said, trying to get back to my original train of thought, "You really don't need to apologize for anything. It's not like you did anything wrong. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. I ran off and made you worry for me when you should have been preparing for your match."

"No!" Yaoyorozu said reflexively. "That's not true at all…"

I looked at her skeptically.

She flushed, and looked down at the ground. "To be honest with you, I was too busy trying to think about what tools I could build to get an advantage over Uraraka. Whether I should use a pole, or a net, or a taser… but when it came right down to it, in the heat of the moment I had too many options. I couldn't choose."

Decision paralysis, huh. That sounded familiar. "When you were a kid," I said with a wry smile, "did you ever wish you had, like, just a simple, straightforward quirk? One that just did one thing, and all you had to do was figure out how to train it and apply it?"

She shared a look of commiseration with me. "Do you know, I asked Uraraka what had been going through her head, after our match? What she had been thinking about?"

"And?" I raised an eyebrow.

Yaoyorozu's eyes narrowed in a flat expression of disgust. "Victory," she said in exasperation. "She was thinking about winning."

"Must be nice," I drawled enviously.

As we reached the door to Recovery Girl's office, she interrupted me reaching for the door. "Hikigaya," she asked, "how do you do it?"

I turned around to face her, leaning back against the wall to rest my bruised back against the cool cement. "Do what?"

"Your fight with Monoma, it was like… you never seemed to hesitate. You always seemed like you had a fresh quirk, a counter to everything Monoma did to you, just ready and waiting to go." Yaoyorozu's warm brown eyes were open wide, and I could see them shine with unshed tears as she looked at me imploringly. "You have as many options as I do, more, but it's like - I mean, even during the Cavalry Battle, it was all I could do to just follow Todoroki's orders, to build what he told me to build. After the battle, I realized that I could have set up a rear view mirror to keep Monoma from sneaking up on us, or a tool to knock him out of the sky - there's so much more that I could have done if I'd only thought of it, and if I had, maybe your plan wouldn't have been ruined. How do you always know what to do?"

What the hell could I even say in response to a question like that? I mean, the real answer was that 'I sit and meditate for six hours a night, and there's absolutely nothing to do, so some of the time I think about how I would use my quirks,' but I was well aware of the fact that doing that made me deeply weird. If I said that it just came to me naturally, though, she'd think there was something wrong with her, and if I said that it was because I thought about it a lot she'd think I was criticizing her for not doing enough. "I -" I broke off, not sure what to say. Faintly, I heard the sound of the television coming through the wall to Recovery Girl's office, probably the sound of Yukinoshita's match. "I didn't make the best decisions I could have," I said lamely. "Every time I, uh, overdraw a quirk like that, it takes a while to come back. Like, days, sometimes."

"But you did it anyway, instead of letting it paralyze you," Yaoyorozu insisted. "Even if you didn't make the optimal decisions, you still _made_ them."

I shrugged, once again immediately regretting the additional movement as soon as I'd done it. "It was that or losing. I mean, you were pulling out airbags and stuff during your fight, right? You didn't hesitate then, did you?"

She shook her head. "No, but by then it was my only option."

"There's your secret, then," I said, a teasing note in my voice. "If you can do things without hesitating when you're panicked, just start panicking earlier. Really, your main issue is that you're just too brave." A real hero, instead of a coward like me.

Yaoyorozu flushed, looking down at the floor again to avoid meeting my eyes. "I, um. We should probably get inside."

She's mad at me, isn't she? Serves me right for making a joke during a serious conversation.

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I'd been healed by Recovery Girl enough times during the first few weeks of school that getting kissed by a little old lady was now only mildly uncomfortable instead of intensely awkward. That is, under normal conditions. Having an audience for it turned the embarrassment back up to excruciating levels. It might not have been so bad had it just been Yaoyorozu there with me, but as it turned out I was by no means the only person seeking medical treatment.

"Was that my quirk you used at the end of your fight against Monoma?" Shinso Hitoshi asked. His wild purple hair stood out vividly against the white walls of the first aid room, and his sunken-looking eyes looked almost sleepy as he asked the question. I had initially been surprised to see him there, but as I moved around a bit in the ward I saw past him to someone I had initially overlooked. The shorter purple-haired kid who had been with Shinso at the entrance to Class 1-A was lying in the bed next to the chair Shinso was sitting in, hooked up to what looked like some kind of respirator. Guess Shinso was keeping his friend company.

"... Yeah," I admitted, doing my best not to crack a yawn as the side effects of Recovery Girl's quirk kicked in and reaching greedily for the gummies that she handed me. I looked over towards the television mounted on the wall, watching as Yukinoshita dodged acid splash after acid splash. "I copied it when I poked you a couple weeks ago."

"So that's how you did it," he said, scowling at me. "Did you really have to tell _all_ of your classmates about it?"

I snorted derisively. "Ambush strategies generally work better when you don't brazenly walk up to your rivals' front door and say, 'Hey! Pay attention to me! I think I have a quirk that gives me a fighting chance against you!'" I replied dryly. "Besides, anybody who I didn't tell is somebody you could have hypnotized and then used to mess with me later. You're lucky I didn't tell the whole school."

"If you had, you'd never have made it to the finals," Shinso shot back. "I doubt anybody on Monoma's team would have decided to drop out just to make room for you."

Was getting on people's nerves something he practiced, or was he just naturally talented at it? "You don't feel even a little bit guilty for messing with their heads like that?" I asked him. It was hard not to picture the expression on Kawasaki's face as she dropped out as I said it. "I mean, if the people you brainwashed are deciding to drop out rather than continue with the competition, doesn't that suggest to you even a little that there's something wrong with the way you treated them?"

"This coming from the guy who got his whole class to team up against everybody else?" Shinso replied sarcastically, his voice getting louder. "Besides, what the hell else was I supposed to do, huh? Not all of us have great quirks like you!"

Excuse me? What? I stopped dead for a second, flabbergasted by the ludicrousness of that statement. "If you had any _idea_ how much time I have to spend every night, just to -"

Thankfully, he cut me off; only later did I realize how close I had been to spelling out explicitly more than a few things I didn't want revealed. "I don't care!" Shinso shouted. "Whatever you have to do, it works! You have literally all the options! But me? My quirk brainwashes people! That's all it does! How the hell am I supposed to compete without using it?"

I could feel my face getting hot, the little hairs on my arms and legs prickling upright as I started to get genuinely angry. "By not using it on your teammates!" I shouted back. "If you'd just talked to them and tried to find a team normally, you might have had teammates who could have actually contributed to you and helped you out, instead of just carrying you around like meat robots!" I pointed to his friend in the bed next to him. "I mean, look at him! His team's combo with the horns and the hairballs and the spores, that was really hard to deal with! If you -"

"Hey! Do you mind quieting down?" A throaty voice shouted from behind a curtained-off area of the recovery room. "Some of us are trying to sleep, kero!"

My jaw closed with an audible click. "Sorry, Tsuyu-san," I said back, much more quietly. Guiltily, I looked back to the television on the wall, only now noticing that I had gotten too invested in the argument to pay attention. Predictably, it looked like Yukinoshita had won, though going by her arms it looked like she had wound up taking a hit after all.

"Look, it's not like I don't hear what you're saying," Shinso said, also much more quietly than he had been. A twisted expression of self-mockery surfaced on his face. "But you don't know what it's like to have a quote-unquote 'villainous' quirk. Pretty much as soon as I tell people that I can brainwash people by talking to them, they start feeling nervous around me. Which, as you might imagine, is not great for team sports."

"Surely it can't be that bad?" Yaoyorozu said, joining the conversation now that she was no longer engrossed by Yukinoshita's match. "I mean, I'm not saying that you haven't experienced discrimination, or that your feelings are unjustified, but I'd think that people would disregard any nervousness that they felt around you in exchange for a chance to win…"

Suddenly, the diminutive student on the bed interrupted the conversation with a virulent spate of coughing. He picked up his phone and started rapidly tapping at the screen. "What's wrong with your friend?" I asked Shinso in a low voice.

"Mineta breathed in some of his teammate's spores when your teammate threw that shirt at them," Shinso replied. "Recovery Girl's quirk doesn't work as well on infections as it does on injuries, so he has to wait for the fungicide to kick in." Mineta? That name sounded familiar for some reason. I couldn't quite remember why… and then I stopped trying to remember as the purple-haired midget turned the screen of his phone towards Shinso. "Mineta says," Shinso said as he read the screen, "Riajuu like you two wouldn't understand. This is our only chance to impress the teachers. Eraserhead said that only one person from General Education would even get into the Make-up Course, so we had to do whatever it took to succeed."

I couldn't help it. I started snickering, then it evolved into full blown laughter. "Me, a riajuu?" I said in disbelief. "You've _got_ to be joking. That, or you just have no idea who I really am."

Mineta's wide, round eyes narrowed at me. He took his phone back and started typing furiously. Meanwhile, Yaoyorozu smiled happily. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about Eraserhead-sensei. He's really quite fond of what he calls 'rational deceptions.' It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was a spot for every student in the general education classes who made a good showing."

Shinso's eyebrow twitched. "Yeah, well, who decides what a 'good showing' is?" When Yaoyorozu couldn't immediately answer, he closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall for a second. "I mean, thanks for the info… but I'm not feeling like I can stop worrying just yet."

Finally, Mineta finished typing. He motioned at me to get my attention, and then turned his phone around to show me a Qwirker feed. At the top was a screenshot of UA's live broadcast. A muscular student, shirtless, was washing the arm of an invisible girl, the barest hints of water clinging to her body proving that he wasn't just touching empty air. A follow up post had him kissing the air, looking for all the world like an elegant gentleman. Hashtags like 'Casanova' and 'Presidential Treatment' littered the page, and the number of reQwotes was rising even as I watched. In numb shock, I looked away from the balefully glowing screen in front of me to meet Mineta's eyes. Beneath the breath mask, I could clearly see his lips move, and even without him vocalizing it I could clearly see exactly what he was saying. Syllable by syllable. "Ria." One phrase after another. "Juu." Those familiar words, ones I had used myself many times over, took their unmistakable shapes on his lips. "Go. Ex. Plode."

"May I see?" Yaoyorozu asked. I was too shell-shocked to say anything, or to try to contradict her, so she got a good eyeful of the travesty that the internet had inflicted upon me. "Oh!" She paused. "Oh my." I dimly heard the door slide open, still experiencing the mental equivalent of a blue screen of death. "Oh my, Hikigaya," Yaoyorozu said, this time with a note of teasing in her voice. "Are you sure this was the time and place for something like this? How bold of you!"

My head snapped around to give her my best withering glare, only to see to my horror that the sound of the door opening had been due to Yukinoshita Yukino and Ashido Mina entering the recovery room. "Whatever's happened, if it involves Hikigaya Hachiman, I'm certain that 'degenerate' is a more appropriate word than 'bold'," Yukinoshita Yukino unjustly accused me.

"Ooh! Is that Qwirker?" Ashido said, a pained note in her voice as she held her arm in an awkward position. "We weren't supposed to have our phones on us for the race, so I haven't checked mine since this morning! Let me see, let me see!"

"Recovery Girl let me grab Mineta's phone for him since he couldn't talk," Shinso explained, "though technically we were all allowed to have them anyway after lunch. I've got it up on my phone now too, if you three want to share."

"Uggggh. If you're all not going to be quiet and let me sleep, you could at least let me take a look, kero," Tsuyu's voice came from behind the curtain. Slowly she shuffled out, wrapped from head to toe in what looked like a thermal electric blanket.

It was official. I was doomed. I didn't even have to wait for my match against Bakugo in a few minutes, my life was clearly already over. "I'm in Hell," I muttered. Ignoring Mineta's grin filled with vicious schadenfreude, I sidled over to the nearby wall, and started repeatedly whacking my forehead against the cement, hoping that the pain of the impact would either make the world start making sense again, or put me out of my misery.

"Oh wow, Hikigaya, you got reQwoted by Shiketsu Academy's official account!" Yaoyorozu said, sounding impressed. "I didn't think they normally got involved in things like this!"

"I'm not certain that they did," Yukinoshita's amused-sounding voice penetrated my misery, sending chilly portents of many future teasings dancing up and down my spine. "Apparently, according to their Qwote, Hikigaya-kun is 'totes, like, ideal hero material, and totes eye candy too!' I doubt that the faculty or staff of the school had much to do with that. What could Hikigaya possibly have done to - oh."

"Aaah, how mean! Tohru-chan didn't tell me about any of this!" Ashido complained. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because she knew that as soon as you found out you'd tell the entire school? "I never knew you were such a romantic, Hikigaya-kun!"

"Uuuuuuugh…" I groaned. I spun to look at them all, my face burning bright red. "I was just using Recovery Girl's quirk on Tohru, and you all know it! Would you _stop_ already?"

There was a sudden silence, as if my impassioned plea had reached their frozen hearts. And then it was broken. Tsuyu took a look at the phone in Yukinoshita's hands, looked back at me, and without changing her sleepy expression uttered a truly despicable word. "Lewd, kero."

The wave of feminine giggles that this inspired, though probably pleasant sounding to a disinterested observer, was like nails running down the chalkboard of my soul. Before any of them could catch their breath for long enough to say something even worse, I very bravely and manfully decided to run away. Quick as a flash, my face burning bright red, I slipped past the four of them and out the door, heading for the 1-A stands.

"Casanoooova!" Ashido's mocking voice called after me as I left. "You forgot your shiiiirt!"

… Honestly, why even bother? If I put a shirt on, Bakugo was just going to blow holes in it in a few minutes anyway. Really, avoiding going back into that recovery room was just good sustainable economics. Down with landfill culture!

On the other hand, maybe I should have turned back. If I had been fully clothed, it might have been marginally less awkward when I turned the final corner approaching the stands and almost ran headfirst into a raging, teary-eyed Todoroki Shoto.

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"Don't touch me," Todoroki Shoto hissed as he took a giant step backwards, far out of arm's reach.

Wow. Some people really knew how to make a guy feel welcome. He wasn't the first person to decide they didn't want their powers copied over the years, but usually when people sidled away from me it was with nervous expressions, or as part of a way to bully me. It was my first time seeing someone say something like that with an expression containing as much raw anger as Todoroki Shoto's did in that moment. "No offense, Todoroki, but you're not my type." I said, trying to diffuse the situation with humor.

"Like you don't know," Todoroki said with a scowl. "Is this supposed to be your punishment for stepping out of line? Getting everyone to gang up on me?" Angrily, he rubbed his eyes furiously with a sleeve.

"Uh… what?" I stammered. Todoroki's mismatched eyes stared accusatory daggers into my own. "Todoroki, I have no idea what you're talking abou-"

"Don't lie!" He shouted. His voice cracked in the middle. His hands balled into fists. Despite the fact that he had just wiped his face, his cheeks were already wet again with tears.

I wanted to pity him. I was also a little nervous that he was going to haul off and punch me. But most importantly, "I'm not lying!" I shouted back indignantly.

He stopped for a second, an uncertain look crossing his face. For a second, his face searched mine, as if searching for signs of dishonesty.

"All right listeneeeers!" Present Mic's voice interrupted us as it echoed through the hallways. "Thanks for waiting! It'll be just a few minutes while we finish cleaning the second half of the frozen acid and repairing the stage, and then we'll be jumping into the eighth and final match of the first round!"

Todoroki's expressions closed down to a blank mask. He wiped his face once again, . "Whatever," he said, a dull heat underlying his voice. "It doesn't matter anyway." He stepped over to the other half of the cavernous hallway, clearly intending to give me a wide berth as he passed.

"Seriously? You really have to go that far out of your way to avoid me?" I said, conveniently forgetting for the moment just how tempted I had been when I saw Todoroki's display of power just a few minutes ago. "If I was gonna copy your quirk without your permission, I've had plenty of opportunities to do it by now."

Todoroki looked at me. "Have you?" He asked. His voice held an odd combination of half vulnerability and half accusation.

No, really, what the hell was Todoroki's deal? "Honestly Todoroki?" I said, looking him straight in the eye. "It's not worth the hassle. Your quirk just isn't that special," I lied. Damn it, not everybody had his raw power level! "I mean, what, you can do fire _and_ ice? Big deal. All I need is a fire quirk and an ice quirk, and then I can do the same thing and I won't even have to be lopsided." Of course if I had a fire quirk, an ice quirk, and Todoroki's quirk, then I could stack them, but screw logic! I was pissed and chewing him out! "Besides, how much use is my piddly copy of your quirk really going to be? I could, what, light peoples' cigarettes? Put ice in their drinks? This is the hero course, not a host club!" As I said that, I became suddenly acutely aware that I was still standing around shirtless, but luckily Todoroki was still too angry to notice the irony.

"Don't take me for a fool, Hikigaya. I know you can overcharge your quirks," he said, folding his arms in front of him defensively and leaning back against the wall of the hallway.

"Yeah. Once per day per quirk, max," I shot back. "That totally sounds like plenty of time to figure out how to use your quirk for big blasts without freezing myself to the ground or lighting my eyebrows on fire. And then I wouldn't have enough juice left to use the other half of my body to melt myself free or put the fire out or however it is you deal with things." It was ironic. I'd come up with reason after reason to convince myself that I shouldn't just accidentally bump into Todoroki and steal his quirk, that it wasn't worth the hassle of having a classmate mad at me. Now I was using them to piss him off even more. "I'd rather copy your dad's power, at least his quirk makes him fireproof if that stupid looking mask of his is any indication."

The corner of Todoroki's mouth quirked upwards, once. "It does." He paused for a second. "So does mine. Coldproof, too."

I could feel my eyebrow tremble in irritation. "Gah, it's like you want me to copy your quirk or something! Just don't mention shit like that if you don't want me to be tempted!"

Todoroki closed his eyes and sighed heavily, resting his head against the concrete behind him. Now that my heart wasn't hammering away at a hundred kilometers an hour, looking closely at him I saw that he looked... well, I couldn't put a name to it exactly, but it was the same sort of familiar expression that I saw every time I looked in the mirror. Whatever it was, it looked like shit. "Sorry," he half-said out loud, half-mumbled. "I shouldn't have accused you."

The irritation I was feeling slowly started to give way. "Don't feel too sorry," I told him. "It's not like I've never been tempted." Todoroki didn't respond to that, leaving both of us standing there in silence. I hesitated. I knew I shouldn't, but the curiosity gnawing at my gut wouldn't leave me alone. "Hey," I started. "Feel free to tell me to screw off if this is horribly invasive, but the reason you don't want me copying you," going off of the burn scar on his face, the way he smirked when I made fun of his dad, the fact that Endeavor overreacted in the audience when Monoma tagged him... "it's because of the fire thing, right? You don't want to use it, and you don't want anybody else using it either?"

Todoroki's eyes snapped open. For a second, I thought he would yell at me or something, given how intensely he was staring at me, but after half a second he closed them again and nodded. "Yeah."

I swallowed nervously. I knew that heroes were just people at the end of the day, not perfect paragons of justice and goodness. But Endeavor having burned his own son's eye? That was like something out of an American anime. Maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions so fast. Shoto could have done it to himself, it could have been a training accident - well, there was only one way to find out. I screwed up my courage and spoke again. "Again, feel free to tell me to screw off if you want to… but can I ask why?"

Again, Todoroki opened his eyes. I had been expecting a repeat of the intensity that they displayed last time, but instead they looked turbid, troubled. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth -

"Yahello! Shoto-kun! Ara, and who's this?" And was promptly interrupted. I turned my head to see a figure both familiar and unfamiliar, and I had to blink my eyes a couple of times to make sure that I wasn't seeing things. The superheroine in front of me both did and didn't look like Yukinoshita Yukino. Her hair was purple, her face was too well-proportioned in comparison to Yukino's angular chin and high cheekbones, and she actually filled out the front of the costume she was wearing. Other than that, everything from her piercing gaze to her long, flawless arms and legs could have been a carbon copy of Yukino's. Even their voices sounded similar. "Ah, you were just on stage before Yuki-chan, weren't you?" She asked.

"A-ah," I stammered, feeling heat spreading into my cheeks. Damn it, I was really regretting not grabbing a shirt. "Hikigaya Hachiman," I said, extending a hand towards her out of reflex. "Nice to meet you."

"He's a power copier, onee-san," Todoroki said as she moved to take my hand. "Don't touch him unless you're okay with him copying you."

The woman paused halfway, then smiled and took my hand. "Oh come on, I'd hardly deny a junior a handshake just because of that! That wouldn't be very nice, would it? Pro Hero Campestris, Yukinoshita Haruno, nice to meet you!" Every ounce of her seemed to ooze sincere friendliness, from the way she tilted her head a few inches to the side cutely to the way she leaned forward just far enough to give me the faint hope of seeing something I shouldn't without actually leaning forward far enough to allow it.

In other words, it was a lie. How did I know, if it was such a perfect mask, you ask? Easy. The perfection itself was a warning sign. No one acted that nice to a total stranger unless they wanted something from them. Besides, like her, I also had a quirk that activated on touch, though mine just copied peoples' quirks instead of ripping their life force out through their skins. I knew a strategy for getting close to people unobtrusively when I saw one. "Oi, if you're going to warn somebody about skin contact, you should have warned me," I complained to Todoroki.

"Eh?" Yukinoshita Haruno said with a fake pout. "That's mean, you know. I'm a Pro Hero, not part of -" she stopped mid sentence, holding a fake microphone up to her face. "The League of Villains," she said in a corny, pompous tone of voice.

…. Oh. I was going to regret looking myself up on Yap! Tube later, wasn't I? "I suppose that's true," I said with a sigh. "You're a Yukinoshita, after all. The only thing I have to worry about around you is my pride."

"Oh ho?" Haruno said, a sly smile stealing over her face. "Now that's a surprise. It sounds like you know my sister fairly well?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "We're in the same work group for classes, so it's not like I don't know her, but it's only been a month, so it'd be unreasonable to say that I know her well."

"Ehhh, and so honest, too…" Haruno said, still smiling. "How… interesting." Suddenly, she leaned in conspiratorially, one smooth, toned arm settling across my bare shoulders in a way that gave me goosebumps. "Do you want to know more about my adorable little sister? I have all sorts of fun stories about her that I could tell." Her breath tickled my ear, sending chills down my spine. "So? What do you say?"

"Hikigaya-san! Hikigaya, are you still here? Hiki - oh!" Yaoyorozu's voice echoed from down the hall, and I immediately tried to wiggle free from the elder Yukinoshita's grip.

Speaking of the younger Yukinoshita, her indignant voice shouted from down the hallway, "what are you doing?" Agh, now she's going to think I was molesting her sister!

"What's the matter, Yukino-chan? It's only some innocent skinship. Life isn't easy for people like us that have touch-based quirks, you know." Despite saying that, however, Yukinoshita Haruno stepped back and away from me, looking self-satisfied.

As she released me I turned to see an angry Yukinoshita Yukino and a lightly blushing Yaoyorozu Momo, the latter of whom was awkwardly holding a sports uniform shirt. "Here," Yaoyorozu said, handing it out to me. "You forgot this."

"Oh." Todoroki said, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation. He pounded a fist into his flattened palm, as if he had just found the answer to a problem that had been bothering him. "So you forgot it."

My face burned hot. "I didn't forget it, I - oh, just give me that!" I said, snatching it away from Yaoyorozu.

"So rude, Hachiman-kun," Haruno said teasingly. Oi, who gave you permission to be so informal with me? "A pretty young lady like this comes all the way from the nurse's office to bring you the shirt you forgot, and not even a word of thanks? Tsk tsk." She clicked her tongue obnoxiously.

"Nee-san." Yukinoshita Yukino's voice was curiously flat and expressionless as I worked the shirt over my head. "What do you want?" Unlike her, to be all business when she could be joining in making fun of me.

Yukinoshita Haruno let out an amused sigh. "Hmm, I wonder. Originally, I wanted to talk to Shoto-kun, since I saw him leaving the stands looking upset, but I seem to have gotten a little bit sidetracked."

I pulled my head through the central hole of the t-shirt just in time to see the flash of concern that crossed the younger Yukinoshita's severe features. "I see," Yukino said quietly. "Should we give you some space to talk?"

"Hmm… nope!" Haruno said cheerfully. "Actually, all of this has been giving me ideas! Shoto-kun." She turned and looked back over at him - then, bizarrely, turned towards me. "Hachiman-kun. How would the two of you like to work at my agency next week?"

I blinked. Ordinarily, having a guaranteed offer in hand from a pro hero would be a good thing. I was banking on being accepted by Cyberpunch, but if I wasn't, then having a backup plan was handy. Unfortunately, Yukino's sister was fresh out of high school, so she can't have been active for long. Odds were, she was just trying to grab whatever UA students she could while we were still popular in the news so that she could get a boost to her hero ranking. If she weren't, I doubt she would have made an offer to Todoroki and I in the same breath. "Sorry," I told her. "I already have plans."

Haruno blinked, apparently surprised at the flat rejection, then pouted. "You could take a little longer to think about it, you know," she said, faking a note of hurt to her voice. "I'm kind of curious, though. Who managed to scoop up an impressive kid like you before the festival?"

Sorry, predator-onee-san. No matter how much you compliment me or flirt at me, I'm not going to be taken in by your desperation. "Actually, it was Cyberpunch," I said, doing my best not to sound smug.

"Eh, Cyberpunch-sempai?" Haruno's mouth quivered slightly, as though her smile was struggling to stay fixed. That's right, you nobody! I have an offer from a real hero, not a desperate high school graduate trying to relive her glory days by acting all buddy-buddy with her much younger and more attractive sister's friends! "Wow, that's -" she paused for a second, clearly intimidated. "Well, I'll send you an invitation anyways, just in case you change your mind."

"Sorry, Haruno-nee-san," Todoroki started, but Haruno held out a hand to stop him.

"I know, I know, you've already got an offer from Uncle Enji," she said, "but hear me out. You've had a lot of chances to see his agency before, even shadowed him and his interns unofficially. To a certain extent, you already know how his agency does things. Right?" Todoroki nodded reluctantly. "Right," she continued. "That's the first reason. Second, you'll have a lot of opportunities during the school year to work with your father, and most of those will be longer than the week long session for the internships. So if you wanted to take a quick look at how a different pro does things, a short session like this one is perfect. And finally?" She grinned confidently. "Uncle Enji's agency is _established_. Me, on the other hand? I'm an up and comer. Which is where you'll want to be when you graduate, right? Setting out on your own?"

Todoroki nodded again, a little bit more thoughtfully. Oi, don't get taken in by her nonsense! Even if she's a family member, there's a limit to how generous you can be! "I see," he said. "I'll think about it."

"It'll let you see some sides of the hero career that Uncle Enji doesn't usually bother with, too," Haruno said. "I know that the media side of things isn't really your focus, but honestly when you're just starting out you could do worse than to get your name and face associated with a few well known brands in order to build your own recognition."

Ah, so that was her game. I'd heard that starting out as a brand new hero could be rough, and that brand new heroes often wound up resorting to modeling or advertising gigs in order to make ends meet, but I hadn't thought Yukino's sister would be unscrupulous enough to rope in her younger cousin for a signing bonus. I couldn't help but interject before Todoroki got completely swindled. I didn't really like the guy, but even I couldn't just sit there and watch as his cousin tried to pimp him out to sell underwear or whatever the hell. "What sorts of brands are you associated with, senpai?" I asked 'innocently'. "Anything we'd have heard of?"

… What? Why was everybody looking at me like that? "Wormygaya," Yukinoshita Yukino said in amusement, "you may be a lower life form, but that's no excuse for actually living under a rock."

"What's wrong with not watching television?" I asked defensively. "I like to read, so sue me."

Yaoyorozu looked at me sadly. "I don't watch much television either, Hikigaya-san, but it's sort of impossible not to know who Haruno-senpai is if you follow hero news even a little. Rookie Hero Campestris beating out Ingenium for the Strike Athletics contract was big news, you know."

Bemusedly, I looked down at my feet. Beneath the grime and dust of the training field, almost unrecognizable with how badly I had battered them to hell and back, my own shoes bore the distinctive Strike 'lance'. My gaze traveled forwards, to the completely pristine set of shoes that Pro Heroine Campestris was wearing, and the matching branded symbol upon them. "... Oh," I said foolishly.

As I scrambled to find some kind of excuse or explanation for my ignorance, Present Mic's announcement once more crackled to life over the interior speakers. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen, the field is cleaned up, so it's almost time for our eighth match! Hurry on back to your seats, because we'll be starting soon!"

Yukinoshita Haruno smiled gently. For once, it actually looked sincere. "You face the winner of this match, right Yuki-chan? You shouldn't let me keep you."

Yukino's amused smile at my expense dropped, vanishing as if it had never been there. "Yes, I do. Goodbye."

Oi, what kind of cold goodbye to your sister was that? If Komachi ever said goodbye to me that meanly, I'd wondering what I did wrong, or if I already knew I'd be on the ground begging for her forgiveness! I wanted to watch the match too, so I hurriedly said "Uh, yeah. It's my block too, so… see ya," before turning to go catch up to Yukino.

Before I could leave, Todoroki called out to me. "Hikigaya." He paused for a second, as if trying to decide what to say, before settling on "... Thanks."

"For what?" I said ironically, before nodding at him and heading out.

With a quick bow, Yaoyorozu bid her farewells as well, and the two of us rejoined Yukino. We walked briskly towards the stadium in silence for a few seconds, before I finally couldn't help but ask. "Oi, Yukino," I called out, still stuck in the mindset of distinguishing between her and her sister, but as she suddenly glared at me I frantically backpedaled. "...Shita," I did my best to save it, "your uncle is Endeavor, your sister is apparently in Strike's ad campaign… is there anybody you know who _isn't_ famous?"

Her cold, emotionless expression persisted for a second, but after a little while a note of humor thawed Yukino's icy blue eyes. She looked at me and smirked. "Let me think. You, maybe?"

My mind involuntarily flashed back to the glimpse of Qwirker I had seen, and I hung my head low. "Ugh. I wish."

"That's infamy, Casanova-san," Yukinoshita said. "An entirely different concept that I'm honestly surprised you aren't more familiar with."

Dammit, Todoroki. Why'd you have to stall me like that?

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By the time we got back to the 1-A stands, Yukinoshita and Yaoyorozu had both returned to their previous state giggling at my expense, a problem only exacerbated by the fact that I kept walking faster and faster to try to escape the teasing without being quite so undignified as to break into a run. I got weird looks from Midoriya, Uraraka, and Iida as we passed them on their way to the waiting area, but I did my best to ignore them, nodding as we passed them by.

As we reached the top of the stairs, those giggles slowly faded away. The atmosphere in the stands was solemn. Awkwardly, no-one spoke as we found our seats, taking the empty spaces behind Yuigahama and Bakugo. Was it related to how Todoroki had left the stands in a huff?

Thankfully, the distraction of the match starting saved me from having to ask any awkward questions. "It's the Misty Maiden, Orimoto Kaori! Versus! The Shadow Sovereign, Tokoyami Fumikage! Will Orimoto's incredible evasion carry the day, or will Tokoyami's combined offense and defense prove too tough a nut for her to crack? Let's find out! Ready?" Below, on the athletic field, both Orimoto and Tokoyami shifted slightly, remaining in their neutral stances but both prepared to unleash their quirks. "Start!"

It was an interesting match-up. Unfortunately, that didn't necessarily make for an interesting match to watch. Orimoto's fog blocked enough light that Dark Shadow got stronger inside of it, so the dynamic between her trying to be aggressive enough to hurt Tokoyami and diffuse enough not to be hurt by his shadow should have been a really interesting back-and-forth of two quirks playing against each other. Who knows? It probably was. Unfortunately, from the stands all we saw was a big cloud of mist that occasionally had a few bits of black stuff peeking out.

It didn't take UA long to turn on the thermal cameras so that we could see through the mist, but unfortunately Tokoyami's Dark Shadow didn't show up on those, so all we saw was Tokoyami standing still to avoid walking out of the ring while bewildered. Technically speaking, a silhouette of a guy with a bird head who occasionally flinched as the fog cloud he was in punched him was slightly more interesting to watch than an opaque ball of fog would have been.

But only just.

To the surprise of presumably no-one watching who knew her from Jaku Middle School, Orimoto Kaori won handily as the accumulated punches that she kept landing on Tokoyami's body eventually took their toll. Class B erupted in cheers, thrilled that at least one of them managed to make it out of the first round.

"Tche. Dammit, Birdbrain," Bakugo muttered. "We almost had the whole top eight."

"Don't mind, Bakugo," Yuigahama said, patting his knee in consolation. "We're still gonna get the top four, right Yukinon?"

Yukino just nodded. "Of course."

It was a little scary how the idea of being the 'strongest class in UA's history' had infected my classmates, even though it was just something I came up with to manipulate them into helping me get into the final round. It made me feel like cringing. "I mean, the whole 'strongest class' thing was based on teamwork anyway," I said. "It's not like there was any reason for us to think we were stronger than them as individuals."

"Of course there was," Bakugo said brashly. "1-A's got us, doesn't it?"

As Yuigahama and Yukinoshita rolled their eyes at Bakugo in what could probably be best described as tolerant exasperation, I couldn't help but notice the conspicuous silence now coming from the 1-B stands over the divider. Yeah, I should probably try to repair as much damage as I could. "If they were actually weak, all of us teaming up to beat them wouldn't have been…" I almost said 'necessary', but Bakugo would probably say something about enjoying stomping on weaklings, and it's not like it was strictly necessary for anyone other than me in the first place. "It wouldn't have been worth the effort. It's because I knew they were strong that I pushed for it." Silence continued to emanate from the other side of the stands. I could only hope that it was a slightly less hostile silence.

"Oh, that's right Hikki! You were classmates with Orimoto-san in middle school, weren't you?" Yuigahama said, twisting slightly in her seat to look back at me. "What was she like?"

… Talk about your uncomfortable questions. "We didn't really talk much," I demurred, "but pretty much everybody knew she had a strong quirk, so I guess you could say she was popular?"

"Oh, I see!" Yuigahama said with a big smile. "I knew somebody like that back in middle school."

"You weren't?" I asked curiously.

"No, no," she said, waving her hand in front of her face to ward the idea off. "I mean, I had friends and stuff, but I was just normal."

That sounded suspiciously like something that a riajuu would say to try to act modest, but given that it was Yuigahama saying so I decided to take her at face value. "And? What happened to them?"

She turned back away from me, facing the athletic field, and shrugged. "I dunno. I think they applied to UA, but I don't think they got in."

Bakugo snorted in contempt. "There's all kinds of losers out there who'll slack off just because extras say nice shit about them to fluff their egos."

"Eh heh heh… maybe?" Yuigahama said. "I mean, it could have been just bad luck, you know."

"Tche." Bakugo said, putting one foot up on the railing in front of him. "Hikigaya got hit by a car the day of the test and he still made it in. If you're good enough, luck doesn't matter."

No, no, Bakugo. I can see why you'd think that, but actually getting hit by a car was a lucky break for me… if you called a chance at a career where the majority of people were either retired or dead by age forty-five lucky, anyway.

"Now, to our ninth match, the first match of the second round, Midoriya Izuku versus Uraraka Ochako! This dynamic duo teamed up for the cavalry battle, but now they're being forced to go head-to-head!" Seriously, Present Mic? The internet is a foul enough cesspool without you waving red meat in front of delusional heroshippers' eyes. On the other hand, if you set them on Midoriya, they might pay less attention to me, so on second thought I wholly approve. You go, Mic-san!

"Ne, Bakubaku, who do you think is gonna win?" Yuigahama asked.

"Round Cheeks," Bakugo replied without even a moment's hesitation.

"Wait, seriously?" Kirishima asked. "Even though Midoriya's, like, crazy strong?"

"Fuckin' Deku is the kind of little bitch who'll pussy out if he has to hit a girl," Bakugo said confidently. "Only way he wins this is if Round Cheeks pussies out too, and from the way she fought Ponytail I don't think it's fucking likely."

"Eh heh heh," Yuigahama laughed nervously. "Right, I forgot who I was asking. What about you two, Hikki, Yukinon? Who do you think will win?"

Obviously Midoriya. But I didn't really feel like getting into a shouting match with Bakugo, so… "Uraraka," I said with a grin. "Midoriya's the sort of guy who'll wimp out if he has to hit a girl."

"Don't just steal my explanation, asshole!" Bakugo shouted at me good-naturedly.

"It isn't theft if there's only one correct answer," Yukinoshita said with a smirk. Oi, is that the first time the two of them actually agreed on something?

"Well, joking aside -" I began, but Bakugo interrupted me.

"I wasn't fucking joking!" He shouted.

"- This is actually a potentially really hard fight for Midoriya," I said, looking at the field intently. "He's fast, but he's so new to that speed that he's still clumsy. All Uraraka has to do is tag him once, and odds are good that he'll send himself right out of bounds."

"I admit," Yaoyorozu said, "I wouldn't mind seeing that. Uraraka-san and Midoriya-san are both close acquaintances of mine, of course, so if one of them has to lose right now then I'd prefer seeing the person I lost to looking even more impressive."

"Are you ready?" Present Mic's voice shouted. "Round nine! Start!"

While the strengths and weaknesses of the contestants on stage were evident to us watching, they were even more evident to Uraraka and Midoriya. Those two had been thick as thieves since practically the entrance exam, to hear them tell it, and were both very familiar with each other's capabilities. Midoriya ran in circles, trying to find an angle to approach Uraraka from; she kept her hands up and ready while spinning in place, waiting for him to make his move.

As fast as Midoriya was, he wasn't literally fast enough to run circles around Uraraka, so after a second he decided to try to rush in, dodging left and right as he approached to try to get in close enough to affect Uraraka. But with all of his maneuvering, he missed the subtle change in Uraraka's weight as she took the initiative. Lunging forward from her position, she stretched out and just barely managed to tag Midoriya's sleeve.

The audience gasped as Midoriya started floating away. "Well, that was fast," I said to no-one in particular. "Come on Bakugo, we better start getting ready for our match."

"Wait." Bakugo said, and I looked at him in confusion for a split second before looking back at the field. To my surprise, Midoriya had maneuvered himself in mid-air, one hand out in front of him while the other grabbed its wrist to brace it. Bakugo grimaced. "The useless fucker's not done yet."

The camera zoomed in on Midoriya, granting us a clear enough view of his mouth to read his lips. As expected from All Might's love child - when he reversed the situation in a split second, he did it with a shout of "SMASH!" Like he had during the fitness test, Midoriya channeled his power into a single finger, breaking it in exchange for a powerful gust of wind that propelled him back towards the earth and into a collision with Uraraka. Before he bounced off of her, Midoriya managed to use his undamaged hand to grab onto her arm.

Uraraka tried to pry Midoriya off, but even without the super-strength, he was still stronger than her. He pulled himself forward using his handhold, and reached around with his other arm to bring himself closer. Uraraka's face went red. I'm sure that part of it was that a boy was hugging her, but more of it probably had to do that Midoriya wasn't holding back with the strength as he squeezed the air out of her.

The following few minutes were ugly, almost certainly embarrassing for both parties, and a show of some of the most boneheaded stubborn determination I'd ever seen. First there was Midoriya flopping around like a dead fish in the air as he tried to figure out how to use Uraraka's weight to get both of his feet on the ground and lift her; then once Uraraka figured out what he was trying, she tried to do the same thing to him, only for him to wrap his legs around her legs to keep her from walking anywhere. Then Uraraka tried hitting him off of her, but he was stuck so close to her that all she could throw were knees and headbutts. Midoriya didn't respond in kind despite the fact that given his strength it might actually have been effective, instead just hanging on doggedly and grimly.

After about the third or fourth knee, Uraraka lost her balance, and the two of them fell together onto the ground. To his credit, Midoriya didn't flinch and didn't let go of her when the two of them landed on his already broken fingers, though the television showed his face was clearly in agony. The two of them rolled around on the ground for a while, with Midoriya squeezing the air out of Uraraka and pushing her off balance whenever she tried to stand. Somehow, he held on until she literally started throwing up all over him and had to release her quirk, at which point Midoriya picked her up and carried her out of bounds in a full nelson as she still struggled frantically.

Glamorous, it wasn't. But it was Midoriya's win.

"Now we can go," Bakugo said, sounding a little pleased with himself as he dusted off his pant legs and stood.

Yuigahama picked up on it too. "You sound pretty happy your friend won, ne Bakubaku?"

"Shut up, Airhead! Who the hell is friends with him?" Bakugo erupted, "I'm just looking forward to watching Half-and-Half-Assed getting his ass beat by puke-boy next round if Glasses doesn't take care of shit for him!"

"Of course, of course," Yuigahama said with a smile. "My mistake."

He leered at her suspiciously. "Damn right you made a mistake," he said with a haughty sniff. "You coming, Hikigaya?"

My eyes met Yuigahama's, and we shared a conspiratorial grin before I stood up and started following Bakugo. "Right behind you."

"Good luck, you two!" Yaoyorozu said cheerfully.

"Yeah, good luck you guys!" Kirishima added. A few more generalized well wishes were sparked by the first two, as people in the class bowed to peer pressure and cheered for us out of societal expectations.

"Feh. Who needs luck," Bakugo said as the two of us moved together into the tunnels in the stadium. "It ain't gonna be luck when I finally kick your ass, Hikigaya."

I felt a cold knot in my gut, but I swallowed heavily and pushed past it. "Right. About that." I paused for a second, and Bakugo looked over at me with an obvious question in his eyes. "How would you feel about a bye into the third round?"

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

"Right. You wanna run that by me again?" Bakugo said, both elbows on the table in the waiting room. Despite the fact that we were nominally competing next round, when I hinted that I might withdraw from the competition Bakugo had followed me into "my" waiting room without taking no for an answer.

"Just what it sounded like," I said, a little confused. "I'm thinking about dropping out and giving you a free pass to the semi-finals. I… kinda thought you'd be happier about the idea, to be honest."

Bakugo's scarlet eyes narrowed as he stared into mine. "Hikigaya. Fucking _why_."

Ugh. This would be so much easier if I could just *tell* Bakugo about the fact that I had to store up quirks. How much work it was, how fucking tedious it was, how I was staying up in the middle of the night just to be able to keep up with the hero course. How committing to another fight meant committing to another two weeks of backbreaking work. But Bakugo was a thug. An intelligent, hardworking thug, but still he was fundamentally someone who only respected strength. "Two reasons," I said. "First, I'm pretty sure I already have what I want from this Sports Festival."

"Which is?" Bakugo said evenly. Despite the fact that he was clearly trying to keep his cool, the muscles in his arms and shoulders were tense, and I could see him clenching his jaw from across the table.

"An internship with someone working on the investigation into that Nomu," I told him.

"Heh. Why am I not fucking surprised," Bakugo said with a smirk. On the television on one wall of the room, Iida kept repeatedly running towards Todoroki's left, in the blind spot created by Todoroki's refusal to use his fire, but neither of us paid attention to the ongoing match. "You know you have it for sure?" Bakugo asked pointedly, and I had to suppress a flinch.

"Not exactly, but I like my odds," I lied uncomfortably. I wasn't nearly that sure. I mean, it felt like Monoma had been a tough opponent, and that the fight itself had been showy, but I had no idea what a real hero's standards were like. It was possible I'd have to win the whole thing to satisfy someone like her. But since there was no way that was going to happen anyway, why not quit while I was ahead? "And then there's the second point," I said, trying to cover my unease. "You know how every time I, uh, Overdrive a quirk, it takes a while to repair itself enough to do that again?"

"Yeah, so?" Bakugo said, folding his arms. "You expecting to need your quirks before tomorrow?"

I shook my head. "They don't come back independently of each other. They come back one at a time. I'm already going to be running on a half tank for like two weeks. If I fight you, I might not be back to full until summer vacation."

Some of the tension went out of Bakugo. "Fuck."

"...Yeah." I replied.

He paused for a second, clearly considering the idea. "...you gonna hurt yourself, pushing your quirk that hard?"

I shook my head. "No, just… I'll be out of gas."

"Do it then," Bakugo said with a smirk. "Come at me with everything you've got, overdrive everything at once. It'll be good training for getting your quirk to grow back faster."

If my quirk actually worked that way, I might even have taken him up on it. "Why the heck do you care, anyway?" I asked peevishly. "If I drop out, you get an extra fight's worth of rest, and you're guaranteed a spot in the semifinals at the least. Aren't you the one who's always talking about how you're going to get first place?"

"Who gives a shit," Bakugo said. "First place doesn't mean jack if I don't impress any pros getting there. Yeah, not fighting you gets me to the semifinals, but it also means I don't get to show off fighting a power copier who can do fucking everything."

Shit. Bakugo was right. If I bowed out now, I'd be robbing him of a chance that he needed for his career. I still could, of course. It wouldn't even be the first time I'd done something like that today. But basically as soon as Bakugo had played that card on me, he'd more or less ensured that I was going to have to see this through to the end.

I looked Bakugo in the eyes. "And if I decide to fight you, and you lose?"

Slowly, a savage grin spread across Bakugo's face. "To your useless ass? Like hell! If you manage to beat me, all that makes you is my measuring stick! I'll just keep coming after you until I beat you, and that'll put me one step closer to number one!"

So if I lose, I get sent to the recovery ward with explosion wounds, if I win I'll have a homicidal maniac after my head in class, and win or lose I'm signing myself up for probably another two weeks of backbreaking effort?

If I knew friends were going to be such a hassle I'd never have gotten any. Still, it looked like Bakugo was expecting some tough talk in return, so I did my best to smirk at him cockily. "Better not regret it," I blustered.

*Pin-pon!* A chime sounded over the speakers. "Next contestants, please proceed to your entry gates. Next contestants, please proceed to your entry gates."

Startled, I looked up at the television hanging on the wall. Todoroki had apparently managed to beat Iida during the bare minute or two that Bakugo and I had been talking. The field was a total mess of ice, with a giant glacier close to the size of the one that had been unleashed against Tsuyu once again taking up a huge chunk of the stadium. "That was fast," I said, feeling the familiar buzz of adrenaline as my body started getting ready to fight.

"Half-and-Half-Assed has fuck-all for stamina, so he always tries to fucking blitz his fights to compensate. Glasses got too fucking impatient." Bakugo said dismissively.

"I don't know if impatient's the right word," I said, shaking my head. "That ice isn't easy to deal with. Iida might have thought his best chance was to get in close."

Bakugo shook his head. "He should have hit and run, let Todoroki exhaust himself, then gone in for the kill."

"I've got stamina issues too," I said. "That how you're planning on handling me?"

Bakugo's slasher grin, if anything, got even wider. "Wouldn't you like to fucking know?" The two of us reached the door. Bakugo stepped out without ceremony, turning to the left and heading down the corridor.

"See you out there," I muttered, and took my own turn to the right.

I took deep breaths as I walked, trying to slow down my heart and calm the butterflies in my stomach. If anything, my nerves felt even janglier than they had before I got ready to fight Monoma. Maybe it was because Monoma's fight had felt necessary? I wasn't a fight maniac like Bakugo. I didn't particularly want to be here. But… it was too late to back out now.

Might as well have some fun with it.

"For our tenth match! What crazy combination of quirks will he come up with next? It's Hikigaya Hachiman! Versus! A student who claims that if there's a problem that explosives can't solve, it's because you aren't using enough of them! Bakugo Katsuki!" Present Mic's corny narration echoed throughout the stadium. The flames at the corners of the battlefield whooshed to life. The crowd cheered. Bakugo Katsuki, his sleeves rolled up to avoid getting his cuffs caught in the blast radius of his explosions, cricked his neck, and shook out his fingers. The bastard didn't look nervous at all. Meanwhile I just stood there, never taking my eyes off of him. "Are you ready?" Mic said, and I brought up my hands to protect my face. For all the talking about Hit and Run that Bakugo had done in the prep room, I wasn't about to just assume that Bakugo wasn't going for a rush of his own. "Start!"

Almost immediately, Bakugo brought both of his hands forward, aimed not at me, but at the ground between us. The world erupted in noise and smoke as his explosion threw up a huge cloud of dust, screening the two of us off from each other.

I didn't like it. I didn't know what Bakugo's plan was, but I didn't want to take the chance of him sneaking up on me, either. With a deep breath, I attuned to a pair of quirks that Bakugo had probably never seen me use before, and shouted. "HYOOOOOO!" One by one, the characters "ヒョオオ" left my mouth as giant white bubbles, forming a massive word-object that shot into the cloud of smoke between Bakugo and I. The word bubbles created by the quirk belonging to the manga-headed student from 1-B weren't just solid objects, either, and I'd chosen that particular onomatopoeia for a reason. They also created additional effects according to the volume that the user shouted with - and because I was simultaneously blowing a stockpile of Present Mic's Voice quirk, I could shout _plenty_ loud.

It wasn't quite as simple as one plus one equalling two, for reasons I hadn't completely figured out yet; I didn't instantly summon hurricane force winds that blew Bakugo off of his feet and out of the ring. Nevertheless, the prodigious gale I did create instantly scattered all of the dust in the air, revealing Bakugo, his hands clapped over his ears to protect himself against the sheer volume of my shout. He had probably started sprinting towards me at an angle as soon as the dust cloud went up, and he continued, fighting his way against the wind to try and get at me from an angle. As he saw me turn to face him, he glowered and removed his hands from his ears despite the fact I was still shouting, then rushed towards me, throwing explosions rapidfire.

I ignored the bursts of heat and light, backstepping as I prepared my next move. Bakugo's explosions relied on his sweat. If I wanted to stand any chance against him in the short run, I had to stop him sweating. Gritting my teeth, I set my feet, staring at Bakugo as he barrelled down at me like a runaway tank. I brought up my right hand to point directly at him, then grabbed it with my left to brace, and brought up a tried and true combination. My hand morphed into a metallic barrel, and a fire hydrant's worth of water sprayed towards Bakugo, almost instantly chilling down to near-zero temperatures as I sucked the heat out of it with Yuki-onna.

Unsurprisingly, Bakugo decided that he'd rather not eat a faceful of ice water. As close as we were, though, there was no way he'd be able to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being sprayed, so he dodged in the only direction he could. Up. Bakugo rocketed into the sky, getting some distance. Over the sound of explosions ringing in my ears, I heard a faint sound. "Grit your fucking teeth, Hikigayaaaa!" Slowly at first, then faster and faster, Bakugo started spinning as he plunged towards me, explosions crackling in the palms of his hands as he prepared for his signature Howitzer Impact.

I wanted exactly zero part of that. Even if I blocked a hit like that, the odds of it blowing me out of the ring were too good. Instead, I grabbed Miura's Light Arrow, pulling my hands apart to their full length against the feedback of her quirk with Stockpile-enhanced strength. A radiant bar of light sizzled to life against my chest, full of charged plasma just waiting to be unleashed. There was a slight problem with it, of course; while Miura had a lifetime's worth of archery training and probably some innate senses for accuracy I had exactly zero of those things. My odds of actually hitting Bakugo with the arrow I was holding were nearly zero. Thankfully, I had a stockpile of my social studies teacher Snipe's quirk available to turn that zero into a one hundred.

For a second, I was hopeful that the glowing bar of light that leapt from my fingers would take Bakugo out of the fight entirely. There was a lot of kinetic energy in that projectile, and as it closed in on him unerringly I saw his eyes widen in panic. Unfortunately, Bakugo's reflexes and instincts were second to none, and he brought the hand preparing his Howitzer up to act as a shield, detonating it just as the arrow was about to make impact. But while the explosion did destroy the light arrow, it also sent Bakugo into an uncontrolled tumble.

It was a chance! As Bakugo did his best to cancel his spin and explode himself so that he landed inside the ring instead of outside of it, I rushed him with all the speed that Stockpile gave me. It was possible that Yukinoshita's match was still on my mind, because as I ran towards Bakugo I attuned back to Yuki-Onna, which still had all of the heat energy that it had sucked out of the water created by Backdraft stored in it. As Bakugo hit the ground, I reached out with an open-handed slap, simultaneously expending all of the heat energy I had in Yuki-Onna with my stockpiles of Second Impact.

It was a hit that should have ended the fight. It would have pierced right through any kind of block that Bakugo put up. Unfortunately, Bakugo had apparently decided that counterattacking was better than blocking. I saw the sparks on Bakugo's palm in just enough time to squeeze my eyes closed and turn my face aside, and then I ate one of Bakugo's explosions to my face at point blank range, without enough time to switch to a defensive quirk.

It felt like a giant's fist, squeezing the air out of my lungs and pushing me backwards. The pain from the burns was secondary, a lingering pain chaser after the immediate gut punch of the wall of superheated air that threw me head over heels away from Bakugo. For a second after I came to a stop, I couldn't help but just lie there on my stomach, stunned. Then the adrenaline running through my veins reminded me that I was still in a fight. I couldn't hear the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps over the ringing in my ears, but as I picked my head up and opened my eyes I saw Bakugo charging, one arm clutching his ribs but the other ready to throw another explosive palm strike. Thinking fast, I slapped the ground between us, shoving my stockpiles of Softening into the cement.

The few seconds that it took Bakugo to notice his feet were stuck in mud, explode himself out of the trap vertically, and land again were just enough time for me to get to my feet. I hurt all over, but everything was moving okay, and the shock of the pain still hadn't passed yet. Regenerating now would just stun me with pain as I healed, so instead of backing off I just attuned to Kirishima's hardening and charged, hoping to catch Bakugo off-guard as he recovered from the quicksand.

The second explosion I took to the face hurt a lot less than the first one. It was more than enough to knock me away from Bakugo, though, and it used up everything in Hardening that I'd had stored. I needed a better plan. As I tumbled head over heels again, I wound up rolling over some shrapnel that had been blasted out of the stage. This time as I came up to my feet, attuned to Steel Skin, and charged again, I threw a rock as I approached. As expected, Bakugo dodged the rock, and I was thrown backwards again - but as I flew backwards I yanked on the rock with the grip I had stealthily applied on it using Poltergeist and hit Bakugo in the back of the head.

Bakugo staggered. I had him on the ropes! Unfortunately, I was running out of armor quirks. As I charged for a third time I pushed Yuigahama's Cloth Armor into my singed and tattered gym uniform, holding my arms crossed in front of my face like a shield. Bakugo recovered his balance just in time to see me at close range, and in a panicked reaction he released his grip on his ribs and set off _both_ hands, right in my face for yet a third time.

Unfortunately for him, I'd gotten his timing down on the first two charges. At the very last second, a blue disk of force sprang to life in front of my crossed arms, and the wall of explosive force bounced off of one of Totsuka's Reflect Rackets. Bakugo went stumbling back, and I darted forward into the opening, winding up a punch that I was sure would knock his lights out.

Ignoring his pain, Bakugo set off even more explosions, shooting backwards to avoid my strike even as he used the blasts for cover, but I wasn't about to let him get away that easily. As I stepped forward, I felt a brief surge of dysmorphia, stumbling over my own feet as my body forgot what length my legs were supposed to be. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it, attuning to Falcon Flight. I didn't need to know how long my legs were if I was flying! I easily caught up to Bakugo, and reached out to grab him by the collar of his gym uniform. He unleashed an explosion into my side with his good hand, but between Yuigahama's quirk and the durability from Hayama's, all that it accomplished was causing me to lose my shirt for the third time today. Using Falcon Flight, I slammed him to the ground, with me on top of him.

This was it! I was going to win! I just had to finish him! As Bakugo's explosion-sparking hand came up to punch me in the side of the head, I switched to my very last defensive combination. The Nomu Special, Shock Absorption + Regeneration. It would hurt like a bastard, but as long as I survived this hit I could return every single bit -

I'd never tried a sixty percent stockpile of Regeneration before. There was a qualitative difference, when it got to that level. The pain still hit all at once, but it healed so fast that it was almost too quick to notice. Bakugo had managed to knock me off of him with that explosion, but I was able to scramble to my feet without any issues at all, and he was still on his back. My body felt full of energy. I hadn't been able to absorb every bit of the force from the explosion, but all the energy I had absorbed was sizzling through my muscles. My whole body felt cold and hot, I was sweating all over even as I almost wanted to shiver, but there was more power in my arms and legs than I had ever felt before. It was an almost floaty feeling, like they were as light as air.

It almost felt like there wasn't any strength in them at all. Well, that was easy enough to fix. I could just use Death Arms. A solid weight of quirkforce wrapped itself around my shoulders and pecs, running up and down my limbs like a warm, heavy hug. Something felt weird about that thought, but it probably wasn't important. My legs didn't want to move either, but I had Stockpile for that, just like when I was biking home. Even if I didn't want to pedal, I still could, so even if it felt like my legs were made out of lead, I could still move forward.

Bakugo's eyes went wide as I took a step towards him. It was a little funny. Seriously? Bakugo, scared of me? I saw his arms tremble as they came up to defend himself, a few sullen sparks dancing in his hands as he tried to come up with enough explosive sweat to force me back. The explosions smelled like burnt caramel, an almost sweet and pleasant smell, but in the moment it was somehow so nauseating that I had to swallow to keep from vomiting. It was okay. I was used to nausea. All I had to do was punch, and I would win! Even if there was a grey mist around the edges of my vision, and the ringing in my ears from Bakugo's explosions was only growing louder, all I had to do was punch! I took another step, and the world tilted. I had to punch! I forced my arm forward, but somehow it didn't go in a straight line. I watched in detached bemusement as my fist slipped through the air and hit the ground with a contact that I couldn't really feel, even as blood sprayed from my knuckles and the ground crackled and crumpled under the force of my blow. Bakugo went flying backwards away from me, tossed by the upheaval of the ground. I tried to pick myself up to chase him, but the world spun again, and suddenly I was looking up at the sky.

Man, sure was blue today, huh?


End file.
